The Unseen World, and Other Essays

by John Fiske

  This is a department of criticism which, we may as well frankly acknowledge, is far better appreciated on the continent of Europe than in England or America. Over the English race there passed, about two centuries ago, a deluge of Puritanism, which for a time almost drowned out its artistic tastes and propensities. The Puritan movement, in proportion to its success, was nearly as destructive to art in the West, as Mohammedanism had long before been in the East. In its intense and one-sided regard for morality, Puritanism not only relegated the love for beauty to an inferior place, but contemned and spat upon it, as something sinful and degrading. Hence, the utter architectural impotence which characterizes the Americans and the modern English; and hence the bewildered ignorant way in which we ordinarily contemplate pictures and statues. For two centuries we have been removed from an artistic environment, and consequently can with difficulty enter into the feelings of those who have all this time been nurtured in love for art, and belief in art for its own sake. These peculiarities, as Mr. Mill has ably pointed out, have entered deep into our ethnic character. Even in pure morals there is a radical difference between the Englishman and the inhabitant of the continent of Europe. The Englishman follows virtue from a sense of duty, the Frenchman from an emotional aspiration toward the beautiful The one admires a noble action because it is right, the other because it is attractive. And this difference underlies the moral judgments upon men and events which are to be found respectively in English and in continental literature. By keeping it constantly in view, we shall be enabled to understand many things which might otherwise surprise us in the writings of French authors.

  We are now slowly outgrowing the extravagances of Puritanism. It has given us an earnestness and sobriety of character, to which much of our real greatness is owing, both here and in the mother country. It has made us stronger and steadier, but it has at the same time narrowed us in many respects, and rendered our lives incomplete. This incompleteness, entailed by Puritanism, we are gradually getting rid of; and we are learning to admire and respect many things upon which Puritanism set its mark of contempt. We are beginning, for instance, to recognize the transcendent merits of that great civilizing agency, the drama; we no longer think it necessary that our temples for worshipping God should be constructed like hideous barracks; we are gradually permitting our choirs to discard the droning and sentimental modern "psalm-tune" for the inspiring harmonies of Beethoven and Mozart; and we admit the classical picture and the undraped statue to a high place in our esteem. Yet with all this it will probably be some time before genuine art ceases to be an exotic among us, and becomes a plant of unhindered native growth. It will be some time before we cease to regard pictures and statues as a higher species of upholstery, and place them in the same category with poems and dramas, duly reverencing them as authentic revelations of the beauty which is to be found in nature. It will be some time before we realize that art is a thing to be studied, as well as literature, and before we can be quite reconciled to the familiar way in which a Frenchman quotes a picture as we would quote a poem or novel.

  Artistic genius, as M. Taine has shown, is something which will develop itself only under peculiar social circumstances; and, therefore, if we have not art, we can perhaps only wait for it, trusting that when the time comes it will arise among us. But without originating, we may at least intelligently appreciate. The nature of a work of art, and the mode in which it is produced, are subjects well worthy of careful study. Architecture and music, poetry, painting and sculpture, have in times past constituted a vast portion of human activity; and without knowing something of the philosophy of art, we need not hope to understand thoroughly the philosophy of history.

  In entering upon the study of art in general, one may find many suggestive hints in the little books of M. Taine, reprinted from the lectures which he has been delivering at the École des Beaux Arts. The first, on the Philosophy of Art, designated at the head of this paper, is already accessible to the American reader; and translations of the others are probably soon to follow. We shall for the present give a mere synopsis of M. Taine's general views.

  And first it must be determined what a work of art is. Leaving for a while music and architecture out of consideration, it will be admitted that poetry, painting, and sculpture have one obvious character in common: they are arts of imitation. This, says Taine, appears at first sight to be their essential character. It would appear that their great object is to imitate as closely as possible. It is obvious that a statue is intended to imitate a living man, that a picture is designed to represent real persons in real attitudes, or the interior of a house, or a landscape, such as it exists in nature. And it is no less clear that a novel or drama endeavours to represent with accuracy real characters, actions, and words, giving as precise and faithful an image of them as possible. And when the imitation is incomplete, we say to the painter, "Your people are too largely proportioned, and the colour of your trees is false"; we tell the sculptor that his leg or arm is incorrectly modelled; and we say to the dramatist, "Never has a man felt or thought as your hero is supposed to have felt and thought."

  This truth, moreover, is seen. both in the careers of individual artists, and in the general history of art. According to Taine, the life of an artist may generally be divided into two parts. In the first period, that of natural growth, he studies nature anxiously and minutely, he keeps the objects themselves before his eyes, and strives to represent them with scrupulous fidelity. But when the time for mental growth ends, as it does with every man, and the crystallization of ideas and impressions commences, then the mind of the artist is no longer so susceptible to new impressions from without. He begins to nourish himself from his own substance. He abandons the living model, and with recipes which he has gathered in the course of his experience, he proceeds to construct a drama or novel, a picture or statue. Now, the first period, says Taine, is that of genuine art; the second is that of mannerism. Our author cites the case of Michael Angelo, a man who was one of the most colossal embodiments of physical and mental energy that the world has ever seen. In Michael Angelo's case, the period of growth, of genuine art, may be said to have lasted until after his sixtieth year. But look, says Taine, at the works which he executed in his old age; consider the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Last Judgment, painted when he was nearly seventy. Even those who are not connoisseurs can see that these frescos are painted by rule, that the artist, having stocked his memory with a certain set of forms, is making use of them to fill out his tableau; that he wantonly multiplies queer attitudes and ingenious foreshortenings; that the lively invention, the grand outburst of feeling, the perfect truth, by which his earlier works are distinguished, have disappeared; and that, if he is still superior to all others, he is nevertheless inferior to himself. The careers of Scott, of Goethe, and of Voltaire will furnish parallel examples. In every school of art, too, the flourishing period is followed by one of decline; and in every case the decline is due to a failure to imitate the living models. In painting, we have the exaggerated foreshorteners and muscle-makers who copied Michael Angelo; the lovers of theatrical decorations who succeeded Titian and Giorgione and the degenerate boudoir-painters who followed Claucle and Poussin. In literature, we have the versifiers, epigrammatists, and rhetors of the Latin decadence; the sensual and declamatory dramatists who represent the last stages of old English comedy; and the makers of sonnets and madrigals, or conceited euphemists of the Gongora school, in the decline of Italian and Spanish poetry. Briefly it may be said, that the masters copy nature and the pupils copy the masters. In this way are explained the constantly recurring phenomena of decline in art, and thus, also, it is seen that art is perfect in proportion as it successfully imitates nature.

  But we are not to conclude that absolute imitation is the sole and entire object of art. Were this the case, the finest works would be those which most minutely correspond to their external prototypes. In sculpture, a mould taken from the living features is that which gives the most fait
hful representation of the model; but a well-moulded bust is far from being equal to a good statue. Photography is in many respects more accurate than painting; but no one would rank a photograph, however exquisitely executed, with an original picture. And finally, if exact imitation were the supreme object of art, the best tragedy, the best comedy, and the best drama would be a stenographic report of the proceedings in a court of justice, in a family gathering, in a popular meeting, in the Rump Congress. Even the works of artists are not rated in proportion to their minute exactness. Neither in painting nor in any other art do we give the precedence to that which deceives the eye simply. Every one remembers how Zeuxis was said to have painted grapes so faithfully that the birds came and pecked at them; and how, Parrhasios, his rival, surpassed even this feat by painting a curtain so natural in its appearance that Zeuxis asked him to pull it aside and show the picture behind it. All this is not art, but mere knack and trickery. Perhaps no painter was ever so minute as Denner. It used to take him four years to make one portrait. He would omit nothing,-- neither the bluish lines made by the veins under the skin, nor the little black points scattered over the nose, nor the bright spots in the eye where neighbouring objects are reflected; the head seems to start out from the canvas, it is so like flesh and blood. Yet who cares for Denner's portraits? And who would not give ten times as much for one which Van Dyck or Tintoretto might have painted in a few hours? So in the churches of Naples and Spain we find statues coloured and draped, saints clothed in real coats, with their skin yellow and bloodless, their hands bleeding, and their feet bruised; and beside them Madonnas in royal habiliments, in gala dresses of lustrous silk, adorned with diadems, precious necklaces, bright ribbons, and elegant laces, with their cheeks rosy, their eyes brilliant, their eyelashes sweeping. And by this excess of literal imitation, there is awakened a feeling, not of pleasure, but always of repugnance, often of disgust, and sometimes of horror So in literature, the ancient Greek theatre, and the best Spanish and English dramatists, alter on purpose the natural current of human speech, and make their characters talk under all the restraints of rhyme and rhythm. But we pronounce this departure from literal truth a merit and not a defect. We consider Goethe's second "Iphigenie," written in verse, far preferable to the first one written in prose; nay, it is the rhythm or metre itself which communicates to the work its incomparable beauty. In a review of Longfellow's "Dante," published last year, we argued this very point in one of its special applications; the artist must copy his original, but he must not copy it too literally.

  What then must he copy? He must copy, says Taine, the mutual relations and interdependences of the parts of his model. And more than this, he must render the essential characteristic of the object--that characteristic upon which all the minor qualities depend --as salient and conspicuous as possible. He must put into the background the traits which conceal it, and bring into the foreground the traits which manifest it. If he is sculpturing a group like the Laocoon, he must strike upon the supreme moment, that in which the whole tragedy reveals itself, and he must pass over those insignificant details of position and movement which serve only to distract our attention and weaken our emotions by dividing them. If he is writing a drama, he must not attempt to give us the complete biography of his character; he must depict only those situations which stand in direct subordination to the grand climax or dénoument. As a final result, therefore. Taine concludes that a work of art is a concrete representation of the relations existing between the parts of an object, with the intent to bring the essential or dominating character thereof into prominence.

  We should overrun our limits if we were to follow out the admirable discussion in which M. Taine extends this definition to architecture and music. These closely allied arts are distinguished from poetry, painting, and sculpture, by appealing far less directly to the intelligence, and far more exclusively to the emotions. Yet these arts likewise aim, by bringing into prominence certain relations of symmetry in form as perceived by the eye, or in aerial vibrations as perceived by the ear, to excite in us the states of feeling with which these species of symmetry are by subtle laws of association connected. They, too, imitate, not literally, but under the guidance of a predominating sentiment or emotion, relations which really exist among the phenomena of nature. And here, too, we estimate excellence, not in proportion to the direct, but to the indirect imitation. A Gothic cathedral is not, as has been supposed, directly imitated from the towering vegetation of Northern forests; but it may well be the expression of the dim sentiment of an unseen, all-pervading Power, generated by centuries of primeval life amid such forests. So the sounds which in a symphony of Beethoven are woven into a web of such amazing complexity may exist in different combinations in nature; but when a musician steps out of his way to imitate the crowing of cocks or the roar of the tempest, we regard his achievement merely as a graceful conceit. Art is, therefore, an imitation of nature; but it is an intellectual and not a mechanical imitation; and the performances of the camera and the music-box are not to be classed with those of the violinist's bow or the sculptor's chisel.

  And lastly, in distinguishing art from science, Taine remarks, that in disengaging from their complexity the, causes which are at work in nature, and the fundamental laws according to which they work, science describes them in abstract formulas conveyed in technical language. But art reveals these operative causes and these dominant laws, not in arid definitions, inaccessible to most people, intelligible only to specially instructed men, but in a concrete symbol, addressing itself not only to the understanding, but still more to the sentiments of the ordinary man. Art has, therefore, this peculiarity, that it is at once elevated and popular, that it manifests that which is often most recondite, and that it manifests it to all.

  Having determined what a work of art is, our author goes on to study the social conditions under which works of art are produced; and he concludes that the general character of a work of art is determined by the state of intellect and morals in the society in which it is executed. There is, in fact, a sort of moral temperature which acts upon mental development much as physical temperature acts upon organic development. The condition of society does not produce the artist's talent; but it assists or checks its efforts to display itself; it decides whether or not it shall be successful And it exerts a "natural selection" between different kinds of talents, stimulating some and starving others. To make this perfectly clear, we will cite at some length Taine's brilliant illustration.

  The case chosen for illustration is a very simple one,-- that of a state of society in which one of the predominant feelings is melancholy. This is not an arbitrary supposition, for such a time has occurred more than once in human history; in Asia, in the sixth century before Christ, and especially in Europe, from the fourth to the tenth centuries of our era. To produce such a state of feeling, five or six generations of decadence, accompanied with diminution of population, foreign invasions, famines, pestilences, and increasing difficulty in procuring the necessaries of life, are amply sufficient. It then happens that men lose courage and hope, and consider life an evil. Now, admitting that among the artists who live in such a time, there are likely to be the same relative numbers of melancholy, joyous, or indifferent temperaments as at other times, let us see how they will be affected by reigning circumstances.

  Let us first remember, says Taine, that the evils which depress the public will also depress the artist. His risks are no less than those of less gifted people. He is liable to suffer from plague or famine, to be ruined by unfair taxation or conscription, or to see his children massacred and his wife led into captivity by barbarians. And if these ills do not reach him personally, he must at least behold those around him affected by them. In this way, if he is joyous by temperament, he must inevitably become less joyous; if he is melancholy, he must become more melancholy.

  Secondly, having been reared among melancholy contemporaries, his education will have exerted upon him a corresponding influence. The prev
ailing religious doctrine, accommodated to the state of affairs, will tell him that the earth is a place of exile, life an evil, gayety a snare, and his most profitable occupation will be to get ready to die. Philosophy, constructing its system of morals in conformity to the existing phenomena of decadence, will tell him that he had better never have been born. Daily conversation will inform him of horrible events, of the devastation of a province, the sack of a town by the Goths, the oppression of the neighbouring peasants by the imperial tax-collectors, or the civil war that has just burst out between half a dozen pretenders to the throne. As he travels about, he beholds signs of mourning and despair, crowds of beggars, people dying of hunger, a broken bridge which no one is mending, an abandoned suburb which is going to ruin, fields choked with weeds, the blackened walls of burned houses. Such sights and impressions, repeated from childhood to old age (and we must remember that this has actually been the state of things in what are now the fairest parts of the globe), cannot fail to deepen whatever elements of melancholy there may be already in the artist's disposition.

  The operation of all these causes will be enhanced by that very peculiarity of the artist which constitutes his talent. For, according to the definitions above given, that which makes him an artist is his capacity for seizing upon the essential characteristics and the salient traits of surrounding objects and events. Other men see things in part fragmentarily; he catches the spirit of the ensemble. And in this way he will very likely exaggerate in his works the general average of contemporary feeling.