Part 5 (1/2)

He deceives no one. On the contrary, he enables us to perceive the logic of certain elementary springs of character. Following the method of the experimentalist, he selects certain aspects from the total complexity of a phenomenon and shows how they work when isolated from the rest. And, like the man of science, he provides insight into the normal, because we can accept his results as at least partially or approximately true. Art of this kind is abstract and therefore less valuable than the portrayal of the concrete; yet only the dogmatist who insists on the restriction of art to the individual can reject it.

There is, however, a third common method of comical representation which neither exaggerates nor abstracts, but preserves the concreteness of the finest art--we may call it the method of contrast. It consists in exhibiting the contrast between the actual conduct of men and women and the standard,--either that which they themselves profess to live up to or our own, which we impose upon them. Their pretenses are unmasked or their absurdities shown up against the ideal of reasonableness. We behold the _bourgeois_ who would be a gentleman remain _bourgeois_ and the women who would be scholars remain women. Success in comedy of this kind depends upon possessing the ability to formulate the implicit a.s.sumptions underlying the behavior of the people portrayed or to make one's own standards with reference to them valid for the spectator. Here is no falsification, but, on the contrary, a vivid revelation of the truth; because, just as by placing two colors in contrast with one another the hue of each is intensified, so by setting man in relief against the background of what he ought to be, we perceive his real nature more sharply. As the child dressed like a grown-up appears all the more childish for his garb, so man appears the more human for his pretenses. To be sure, in order to increase the comical effect, this method is often employed in conjunction with that of exaggeration. The Athenian democracy was probably not quite so stupid as Aristophanes represents it; the average Britisher is not so philistine as Shaw paints him. Yet the measure of exaggeration may be small and we readily discount it. And finally, whereas in simple representation there is a revelation of the object only, in comical representation there is a two-fold revelation,--of the ideal and of the incongruous reality. The former is always indirectly revealed; for, as we know, the very existence of the comic depends upon it. The man who laughs, his notion of the right and the reasonable, his att.i.tude towards the world and life, become manifest through the things which he laughs at. Only a man of a certain kind, with a certain sympathy and antipathy, could laugh as he laughs. The comic writer, however much of a scoffer and a skeptic, and however much he may deny it, is always an idealist. And it is for the revelation of themselves as much as for the revelation of the people whom they portray that we value the work of a Swift, a Voltaire, or a Thackeray.

Another charge which has been brought against the comic is that it is unsympathetic. Its att.i.tude, it is said, is one of externality, opposed therefore to the intimacy necessary for the complete aesthetic reaction.

Whereas simple aesthetic representation places us within the object itself, comical representation only exhibits a relation between it and an idea. We judge it from our point of view, not from its own. The pleasure in pride and superiority which we feel towards the comical object seems also inconsistent with sympathy; for sympathy would create a fellow feeling with it, and place us not above, but on a level with it. If we do sympathize, the comic object ceases to be comical and becomes pathetic. We can find the follies and sins of men comical just so long as we do not sympathize with the sufferings which they entail.

There is nothing comical that may not also become pathetic; and the difference depends exactly on the presence or absence of sympathy.

Nothing, for example, is more pathetic than death; yet if you keep yourself free of its sorrow, there is nothing more comical--that man, a little lower in his own estimation than the angels, should come to this, a lump of clay.

It is unquestionably true that a free, disinterested att.i.tude is essential to comedy. You must not let yourself be carried away by any feeling; if you are over-serious you cannot laugh; you must keep to reflection and comparison. Yet this att.i.tude is not utterly destructive of all feeling. Man is complex enough at once to feel and to reflect.

He can pity as well as laugh. The pathetic and the comic are constantly conjoined--witness our feeling towards Don Quixote or towards any of the great characters of Thackeray--we do not know whether to laugh or to cry. And in the most effective comedy, the standard applied to the comical object is not foreign, but rather, as we have observed, the implicit standard of the object itself, discernible only by the most intimate acquaintance with it. The sting of laughter comes from our acceptance of it as valid for ourselves; we blush and join in the laugh at ourselves. The mischievous-comic, moreover, depends directly upon sympathy; for it requires that we take the point of view of the funny thing; our pleasure in it implies a secret sympathy for it--we hold it up to a standard, yet all the time are in sympathy with its rebellion. When we laugh at the prank of the child, love is mixed with the laugh. The dual nature of man as at once a partisan of convention and of the impulses that it seeks to regulate, is nowhere better ill.u.s.trated than in the comic. Finally, disinterestedness is not peculiar to comedy; for it pervades all art. Feeling must be dominated by reflection; even pathos demands this, for, if we lose ourselves in sorrowful feeling, no fair image can arise and steady us.

There is, however, much comedy that is obviously unsympathetic, even hostile. There is satire, which condemns, as well as humor which pardons. The one blames the unexpected and unconventional, the other sympathizes with it. Comedy is either biting or kindly. The one is moralistic and reformatory in its aim, the other is aesthetic and contemplative. Because of its failure in sympathy, satirical comedy is incomplete as art. It provides insight and pleasure in the object, but no union with it. It does not attain to beauty, which is free and reconciling. Kindly comedy or humor, on the other hand, is full beauty, combining sympathy with judgment, abandon with reflection. Nevertheless, satire tends inevitably towards humor. For what we laugh at gives us pleasure, and what pleases us we must inevitably come to like, and what we like cannot long fail to win our sympathy. I do not think that even a Swift or a Voltaire could have been irreconcilably opposed to a world which offered them so much merriment. The satire, which begins in moral fervor, must end in understanding. The bond that binds us to our fellows is too strong to be broken by the aloofness of our condemnation. The same intelligence that discerns the incongruity between what men ought to be and what they are, cannot fail to penetrate the impelling reasons for the failure. Only in humor is sympathetic insight complete. Satire has the temporal usefulness of a practical expedient, humor the eternal value of beauty.

CHAPTER VII

THE STANDARD OF TASTE

Our interest in art is seldom a matter of mere feeling or appreciation; usually it is a matter of judgment as well. Beginning in feeling, the sthetic experience pa.s.ses over into comparison and estimation--into criticism, and there finds its normal completion. This, which is evidently true of the aesthetic life of artists and connoisseurs, is true also of average men. We all enjoy the beautiful in silence, but afterwards we want to talk about it to our friends. If conversation about art were suppressed, the interest in it would hardly survive.

On this side, the enjoyment of art is intensely sociable, for to the civilized man sociability means discourse.

But, as Kant pointed out, it is characteristic of conversation about art that the partic.i.p.ants try to reach agreement in their judgments without acknowledging common principles with reference to which disputes can be decided. And yet, since no man is content to hold an opinion all by himself, but each tries to persuade the others of the validity of his own judgment, it would seem as if there must be some axioms or postulates admitted by all. Hence what Kant called the antinomy of taste: Thesis--the judgment of taste is not based on principles, for otherwise we would determine it by proofs; ant.i.thesis--the judgment of taste is based on principles, for otherwise, despite our disagreements, we should not be quarreling about it.

In accordance with this situation, two opposed theories of criticism have always existed. On the one hand, in face of the apparent lawlessness of beauty, some thinkers have believed that there exist principles which can be applied to works of art to test their beauty with a certainty equal to that of the principles of logic in their application to inferences. Lessing, for example, in the _Hamburgische Dramaturgic_ wrote that the laws laid down by Aristotle in the _Poetics_ were as certain in their application to the drama as Euclid's _Elements_ in geometry. This comparison is a forcible statement of belief in the existence of aesthetic standards, held by the entire cla.s.sical tradition, and still held by those who are spiritually akin to it, although of course no one to-day would claim--and when it came to details Lessing himself did not claim--that the judgment of Aristotle or of any one else is infallible. To-day those who believe in the possibility of rational aesthetic criticism think that reflection upon the purpose and methods of the arts results in the formulation of broad principles by means of which judgments of taste can be appraised and a community of taste achieved. These principles, they would admit, are more difficult of application than the simpler logical rules, owing to the greater subtlety and complexity of art, yet, when found, have an equal validity within their own field.

On the other hand, the view that ”there is no disputing about tastes”

has never lacked adherents. According to this view, criticism can be only a report of personal, enthusiastic appreciation or repugnance without claim to universality. Anatole France, surely a master of such criticism, has expressed this conviction as follows: ”L'estetique ne repose sur rien de solide. C'est un chateau en Pair. On veut l'appuyer sur Pethique. Mais il n'y a pas d'ethique. Il n'y a pas de sociologie”

... And again, in the same preface to _La Vie Litteraire:_ ”Pour fonder la critique, on parle de tradition et de consentement universel.

Il n'y en a pas. L'opinion presque general, il est vrai, favorise certains oeuvres. Mais c'est en vertu d'un prejuge, et nullement par choix et par effet d'une preference spontane. Les oeuvres que tout le monde admire sont celles que personne n'examine.” Although the cla.s.sic view is, I think, nearer the truth, let us examine the arguments that may be advanced in favor of the impressionistic theory, as it has been called. What is there about aesthetic appreciation that makes it seemingly so recalcitrant to law?

First, every aesthetic experience is unique, and therefore, it is claimed, incomparable. Art is the expression of personality, and personality is always individual. But unique things are, in the end, incapable of cla.s.sification, hence are not amenable to general laws or principles. Of course, works of art can be cla.s.sified by following some abstract characteristic, arranged in a series according as this quality is realized in them to a greater or less degree; but, in so far as a work is beautiful, it contains at least one quality not possessed by other works, the quality that gives it its distinctive flavor,--which is, indeed, its beauty. The impressionist would admit, for example, that in intellectual power Keats's _Eve of St. Agnes_ is inferior to Wordsworth's _Intimations_; also that it lacks the moral grandeur of the latter; but would claim, on the other hand, that in saying this, one is far from judging the beauty of Keats's poem, because that is completely lacking in Wordsworth. So far as the poem is beautiful, it is unique; hence you get no farther with it through comparison with some other poem. You either appreciate it absolutely or you do not; if you do, well and good; you may then write a prose poem about it, if you desire, and so communicate some of your feeling for it to another person; if you do not appreciate it, no one can blame you or quarrel with you; all that any one can do is to invite you to read again, and, perhaps through his eloquence, seek to inspire you with--his own enthusiasm. Every work of art is superlative. Just as the lover thinks his sweetheart the most beautiful woman in the world, so he who appreciates a work of art finds it supreme. And among superlatives there is no comparison, no better or worse.

From another point of view, moreover, the aesthetic experience seems unfavorable to comparison and cla.s.sification. For a work of art demands a complete abandon of self, an entire absorption in it of attention and emotion. Every picture has a frame, and every other work of art an ideal boundary to keep you in its world. Beyond the frame you shall not go; beyond the stage you shall not pa.s.s; beyond the outline of the statue you shall not look. And if you do pa.s.s beyond, you have lost the full intensity and flower of the experience; and whatever comparisons you then make will not concern its original and genuine beauty. Every work of art is jealous; to appreciate it aright, you must for the moment appreciate it singly, without thought of another.

Finally, the impressionist or skeptic would maintain that an alleged aesthetic principle would necessarily be abstracted from extant works of art; hence could not be applied to new art. A thing which does not belong within a cla.s.s cannot be judged by principles governing that cla.s.s. In so far, therefore, as a work of art is original, it must frustrate any attempt to judge it by traditional, historical standards--and what other standards are there?

Although the two facts of the aesthetic experience--its uniqueness and claim to complete sympathy--upon which the skeptical opinion can be based, are undoubted, the inferences deduced from them do not follow.

If they did follow, the aesthetic experience would be fundamentally different from every other type; it would be totally atomic and discrete, instead of fluid and continuous like the rest. But its apparent discreteness is due to a failure to distinguish between the silent, un.o.btrusive working of comparison and the more obvious and self-conscious working. When rapt in the contemplation of a work of art, I may seemingly have no thought for other works; relative isolation and circle-like self-completeness are characteristic of the aesthetic experience; yet, as a matter of fact, the completeness of my reaction and the measure of my delight and absorption are partly determined by the accordance of the given work of art with a certain expectation or set of mind with reference to objects of its sort. I can consent fully to the will of the artist only if he has first consented to my will as expressed in other works which I have enjoyed and praised. The situation in aesthetics is no different from that which exists in any other field of values; through many experiences of good things I come to form a type or standard of what such things should be like; and, if any new thing of the kind is presented to me, I cannot be so well pleased with it if it does not conform. The type may never be formulated by me explicitly, yet it will operate none the less. The formation of what is called good taste occurs by exactly this process. The first work of art that I see, if it please me, becomes my first measure. If I see a second, in order to win my approval, it will either have to satisfy the expectation aroused by the first, or else surpa.s.s it. In the latter case, a standard somewhat different from the old is created through the new experience; and, when I have acquired a large acquaintance with works of art, there grows up a standard which is the resultant of all of them--a type or schema no longer a.s.sociated with particular works. Sometimes, however, it happens that the standard continues to be embodied in some one or few works which, because of outstanding excellence, serve as explicit paradigms governing judgment; such works are cla.s.sics in the true sense. And the impressionist is certainly wrong in his contention that the aesthetic appreciation of a work of art excludes the recall of other works and conscious comparison with them. It is only when appreciation is of the more naive sort that this is the case. The trained observer, on seeing one of Vermeer's pictures, for example, cannot fail to think of other works of the same artist; and, if he is learned in the history of art, he may even recall the whole development of Dutch painting. For the moment, perhaps, at the beginning, the single work will completely absorb the attention; but, as we linger in appreciation and reflect upon it, our memory is sure to work. And the process of memory and comparison cannot be excluded on the ground that it is an external, irrelevant context to appreciation; for it actually functions to determine the degree of pleasure and absorption in a work of art. Moreover, this process of memory and comparison is not confined to the individual observer; it is social and historical as well. All art movements are inspired by the desire to improve on, or to create something different from, the conserved tradition. The process of creation itself involves comparison and the recognition of a standard. And for our civilization at any rate these movements are international. They are not the products of isolated discrete groups, impenetrable to each other, but of a relatively universal, continuous experience.

As for the uniqueness of aesthetic value, that, to be sure, is a fact; yet uniqueness is never the whole of any object. Those aspects which ally it with other things are just as genuinely its own as those which differentiate it from them; they equally are a part of its beauty. The attempt to separate any part of a work of art from the rest as ”the real part” is an unwarranted and arbitrary dismemberment. The work is whole, and beauty belongs to it as whole. Hence, when, through comparison, you attend to the qualities that are shared with other works, you are still judging the reality and beauty of the object, quite as much as when you seek to taste its unique flavor. A competent judgment can neglect no aspect. The judgment that a work of art is better or worse than another in some general aspect touches it just as surely as the feeling for its distinctiveness. And if it be true that so far as things are unique they are all on a level, it is equally true that so far as they are not unique they are capable of being serialized, and our total judgment upon them must follow the lines of comparison.

It is impossible, therefore, not to compare works of art one with another. We will concede to the impressionist that anything which anybody finds beautiful is beautiful momentarily; but we must insist on the everyday fact that, because of the operation of the standard as a result of growing experience in art, what once seemed beautiful often ceases to seem so. And we must also insist that among the things surviving as beautiful we inevitably set up a hierarchy, a scale. A plurality of values, each unique and in its own way indispensable to a complete world of values, is not inconsistent with relations of higher and lower among them. The impressionist has taught us to love variety and to renounce the bigotry of the old refusal to accept anything short of the highest. But in aesthetics--and in ethics too, I believe--the standpoint of Spinoza rules: ”G.o.d is revealed in the mouse as well as in the angel, although less in the mouse than in the angel;” and, I should add, the revelation through the humbler mouse is necessary to a complete revelation of G.o.d, that is, of the Good.

Or, as Nietzsche said, ”_Vieler Edlern naemlich bedarf es, da.s.s es Adel gebe!_” Our appreciation of _Midsummer Night's Dream_ does not prevent us from appreciating _Alice in Wonderland,_ just as our esteem for the man does not hinder our feeling for the peculiar charm of the child.

What takes place through the process of comparison is this: we come increasingly to realize what we want of art. Every artist seeks to express something in terms of the material with which he works. But it is only by experimenting with his medium that he learns what he can and what he cannot do; and it is only by constant hospitable, yet discriminating appreciation by us spectators that we, in our turn, discover what to demand of him and commend. Consider, for example, the history of painting. That we want of a picture, sometimes the delineation of emotion and action, yes; but above all and always, the representation of visible nature, with s.p.a.ce and atmosphere and light--this purpose has been developed slowly and as the result of many experiments and comparisons. But having won it, we are secure in it. We shall still appreciate the beauty of the primitives and academics, but we shall not be able again to prefer them to the _plein-airistes_. Or recall the development of English poetry.

We still admit the contribution of Dryden and Pope, but we shall never have to fight over again the battle won by Wordsworth and his contemporaries for imagination and emotion. Our conception of the purpose of poetry has been enriched by an insight that we cannot permanently lose. There are, to be sure, retrograde movements in the arts--like the Pre-Raphaelite movement in painting--but they are soon recognized as such.