Читать книгу Art principles in literature - Francis P. Donnelly - Страница 6
Оглавление1. INDIVIDUALISM AND RESPONSIBILITY
A group was standing before a futurist or cubist picture. The group did not know what the picture was all about, but one spoke up in defense of the bewildering work: “Well, after all, art is a language, and why shouldn’t a man be permitted to speak his own language?” A bystander, not daring to address strangers, made answer under his breath: “If art is a language, this artist is talking to himself.” Maudlin, incoherent remarks, disjointed utterances, and in general talking to one’s self, all that, does not pass for high art among men, but for something quite different. To talk to one’s self is the extreme of individualism in conversation; to ignore the world addressed through artistic composition is the triumph of individualism in art.
The abrupt break with all tradition in every art, and the untrammeled expression of the individual, have worked out to the inevitable and bizarre conclusions which a like rebellion has brought about in religion and morals. Every man his own dogmatist; every man his own moralist; that is the individualism which has divided mankind into multitudinous sects and has made millions of moral, unmoral and immoral moralists eager for legislation of infinite variety without any fixed principles to enforce the observance of even one law. Conscience, the executive impulse of all legislation, used to be the voice of God, but individualism has made it anything from a survival of the fittest or an economic standard, through countless varieties all the way to a Freudian complex.
Individualism has run amuck in art from classicism to cubism. It is a barren day which does not produce a new system of religion or morals, and only the occurrence of earthquake, war, fire or some other tremendous upheaval keeps our journals from recording some new theory of art, some Tomism, Dickism or Harryism. Art for art’s sake has been given an individualistic interpretation and has produced the same rich crop, as the individualistic cry, every man his own dogmatist and moralist, has produced—a rich crop of weeds.
If ever an individual could pursue his blissful way oblivious of the existence of a surrounding universe, surely he may not do so now when the universe impinges upon him every moment through ticker, telephone, wireless and unlimited “extras.” There is, however, no such thing as unrestricted individualism. Of God alone can be predicated existence for its own sake. Everybody his own dogmatist means ultimately everybody his own god. Art for art’s sake, interpreted in an individualistic sense, would not only destroy art but would destroy the world. Art for art’s sake should read art for everybody’s sake and for the sake of God, and such a reading will be infinitely better for art’s sake.
It was an Irish colleen, accepting matrimony as a complete submergence of individuality, who replied to a friend dwelling on the dangers of a long ocean trip to be taken by the new bride and groom: “And why should I be afraid, sure ’tis his loss if anything happen to me now!” She was the counterpart of the Irish lad who sang under similar circumstances, “I’m not myself at all.” There you have the complete altruism resulting from the perfect union of matrimony. There is the antithesis of individualism, and such matrimonial communism is far better for every one than any cry of “wife for wife’s sake” or “husband for husband’s sake.”
It is quite evident that no artist can exempt himself from responsibility as though his art were a deity. If a picture or statue or poem would be an incentive to murder or suicide, the artist must stay his hand. He may not manufacture bombs for soul destruction, no matter how artistic the container, even if someone else is to supply the detonator. A lie in beautiful language is a more ugly lie. Recent pretended upholders of the Volstead law have printed an emphatic warning on compounds of their manufacture: “Do not add such an ingredient or this compound will violate the law.” May an artist naïvely dissociate himself from responsibility by stating: “Do not add human nature to my art-product or you will violate the law”? Were the artist a real creator, he would have to forecast results and be dominated by a purpose. Nor may the artist, like God, permit evil, because no artist has omnipotence and infinite wisdom and justice and mercy, governing the permission of evil and guaranteeing good as the final result. May a man who owns a wild tiger of surpassing beauty, trusting in the right of property, parade down a crowded thoroughfare with his jungle pet tethered to a thread?
But why all these truisms? Because individualism in art aims in principle and production not only to free art from restrictions but even to exempt the artist from responsibility. The artist may not talk to himself unless he can find a South Sea island where there is neither man nor God. Nor is it a deadening of his artistic impulse for the artist to be ruled by high purposes, but rather it is a stimulus and an inspiration. Eschylus and Sophocles have a sublimer beauty than Euripides because the earlier dramatists recognized more fully and kept better in view the religious purposes of Athenian drama. Euripides, wishing to cater more to theatric effects, succeeded in being more emotional and in achieving a realistic but transient interest, the hectic flush that marks decay and death in twilight and autumn and sinister disease. Is the marked revival of Euripides within recent years a sign of decadence?
The Madonnas of Italian art received from the painter a solemn beauty not only because they depict Divine maternity, but even too because they were to grace a religious shrine and to constitute part of a religious service. That may be one reason why the Madonnas of Italy are far superior to the prettiness and sentimentality of more recent Madonnas which are painted for private homes and for ephemeral interest.
The purpose of the artist is one thing and the purpose of art is another thing. The purpose of a watch is to keep time whatever purpose the watch-maker may have. It is likely, however, that if he makes the watch for his mother, he will produce better results than if he worked for his usual wage or than if he functioned as part of a machine, having no clearly defined ulterior purpose. So an artist will be inspired in painting, in sculpture, in music, in all arts, to elicit better his full powers and to achieve finer results when he toils for a cathedral than when he works for a cabaret. Noble responsibility conscientiously recognized and fulfilled is no check, but rather a spur to the artist.
“Art for art’s sake” may, however, be taken to mean, “Embody beauty wherever found, or realize to the full your ideal,” and such a meaning is excellent and fruitful unless excessive individualism insists upon expressing its own perverted ideas of beauty and its own eccentric ideals. When Horace said, “Let justice be done though the heavens come crashing down,” a line that might be rendered, “Justice for justice’s sake,” he was far from advocating the explosion of a bomb by some Roman anarchist whose idea of justice was to bring all to a dead level of ruin. The progressive improvement in the realization of art-ideals may be very well illustrated from the career of Horace. Horace gradually worked himself free from the conventionality and baseness of his epodes and earlier satires, experienced the cleansing process of true humor in later satires, took fire at the moral degeneracy of Rome in the initial odes of the third and last book of his first edited lyrics. There the sæva indignatio of Horace brought him within distant sight of sublimity. His progress in philosophy weighted the wings of his song but dowered him with the crystal and clean wisdom of his epistles, of which it has been said one need not blot out a single line. Had Horace retained the youthful vehemence of the republican amid the enervating peace of the new empire, he might have followed Dante and Milton from lyric beauty to epic sublimity, or might have risen with Shakespeare and Molière from song to comedy or even to tragedy, but his hedonistic sleekness and his excessive self-consciousness kept his ripened philosophy in brief letters, when a more vigorous mentality with the help of philosophy might have converted his ennobled power of satire into comedy or transformed the lyric portraits of his early days into tragedy or epic story.
