Читать книгу The origins of art; a psychological & sociological inquiry - Y. Hirn - Страница 8

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We have pointed out that enjoyment can be derived by sentimental reflection on moods of sadness. Such refined forms of the “luxury of grief” presuppose a certain intellectual development and a tendency to introspection, which cannot possibly be assumed in primitive man. But as the active forms of the so-called pain-emotions are highly appreciated—we may even say indulged in as enjoyments—by the lower tribes of man, there must evidently be some more immediate cause of this delight. And we are the more tempted to look for this cause in the emotional process itself, by the fact that even bodily pains, which do not admit of any sentimental interpretation, may be deliberately excited.

We remarked in our treatment of the simple emotional elements, that pleasure and pain can in no case be estimated by any absolute measure. Now that we have to find some explanation of the delight in pain, which applies to purely physical as well as to mental pain, we begin by admitting that the relative character of feeling probably accounts for many instances in which the pain is merely apparent. The same external stimulus which acts on one individual with hypernormal strength, and therefore evokes pain, may in the case of another individual who has duller senses, produce a weaker impression, and thus call forth a pleasurable reaction. The taste and smell anomalies of hysterical patients afford us good examples of such abnormal pleasure. And, on the other hand, there are plenty of instances, too familiar to be enumerated, in which an impression which a sick person would call painful brings pleasure to a healthy one.

Again, the power of receiving pleasurable sensations from strong stimuli may often be increased by exercise. Mr. Marshall has applied his psycho-physiological principles to the interpretation of these “acquired pleasure-gettings” and though he perhaps does not exhaustively and convincingly explain the process, he at least gives a graphic and clear account of its most probable course. He thinks that a hypernormal stimulus indirectly increases the blood-supply to the stimulated organ. This organ will therefore, if the operation of the stimulus is not too prolonged, store up some portion of unused nutritive force during the subsequent repose. And thus, if the same stimulus is shortly afterwards repeated, the organ will be able to respond with greater facility and intensity, i.e. react under the conditions of pleasurable reaction. In this way Marshall accounts for the classic instances of acquired liking for olives and tobacco.[78]

It is probable that a similar influence of repeated exercise may also operate in the department of compound emotions. Lehmann, who explains the transformation of originally painful impressions into pleasurable ones in a somewhat different way, viz. by his law of “the indispensability of accustomed things” refers to this law those instances in which persons who have had many troubles grow so accustomed to them, that in a moment of ease they feel a kind of loss.[79] The validity of this law will be recognised by every one who has any opportunity of observing the vaguely and weakly unpleasant feeling which sometimes appears when we are suddenly liberated from some pursuing anxiety. And the indispensability of accustomed sensations may impel persons to create new mental pains or worries to replace the old ones.

Yet the mere craving for customary sensations cannot explain those cases of genuine luxury in grief in which pain-sensations and pain-emotions are sought precisely because they are painful. But if we take into account the powerful stimulating effect which is produced by acute pain, we may easily understand why people submit to momentary unpleasantness for the sake of enjoying the subsequent excitement. This motive leads to the deliberate creation not only of pain-sensations, but also of emotions in which pain enters as an element. The violent activity which is involved in the reaction against fear, and still more in that against anger, affords us a sensation of pleasurable excitement which is well worth the cost of the passing unpleasantness. It is, moreover, notorious that some persons have developed a peculiar art of making the initial pain of anger so transient that they can enjoy the active elements in it with almost undivided delight. Such an accomplishment is far more difficult in the case of sorrow. The reactions are here seldom allowed so free a course as to be able to change the feeling-tone of the state. Moreover, the remembrance of the objective cause will always tend to reawaken the original feeling with its accompanying inhibition. Besides, a man of culture and refinement is generally deterred by a kind of respect for his own emotional life from artificially stirring up states of sorrow for his own enjoyment. This reluctance, however, does not seem to exist in lower stages of development. The crying feasts of the Maoris and the Todas—which afford a striking parallel to the ceremonial wailings of ancient Greece—are no doubt, whatever their ritual significance may be, attended with a kind of pleasure.[80] By seizing on some real or fictitious cause for grief—the death of a Linos or an Adonis—the participants succeed, we imagine, in creating a state of sorrow in which the active and stimulating elements outweigh the pain.

However barbarous this kind of amusement may seem to us, it is by no means certain that we have completely outgrown such pleasures. The delight in witnessing the performance of a tragedy undoubtedly involves the enjoyment of a borrowed pain, which, by unconscious sympathetic imitation, we make partially our own.[81] And the same phenomenon appears in a yet cruder form in the custom, so general among the lower classes of most countries, of visiting funerals and similar ceremonies where sorrow can be contemplated and shared. Even civilised man is thus able to enjoy the pleasure which may be connected with emotions of sorrow and despair, at least in second-hand reproduction.

It is scarcely necessary to go through all the various emotional states in order to prove that every one of them, if it can per se be enjoyed (in nature or art), is either primarily or by its reactions connected with an increase of outward activity. But we must point out that the pleasure derived from this motor excitement is often still further enhanced by the agency of an intellectual element which is simpler than sentimental reflection, and does not presuppose any tendency towards introspection. In pain as in pleasure, in suffering as in voluptuousness, we attain a heightened and enriched sensation of life. The more we love life, the more must we also enjoy this sensation, even if it be called into existence by pain. Lessing, who cannot possibly be called morbid, confesses to this taste in an interesting letter written to Mendelssohn: “Darinn sind wir doch wohl einig, l.F., dass alle Leidenschaften entweder heftige Begierden oder heftige Verabscheuengen sind? Auch darinn: dass wir uns bei jeder heftigen Begierde oder Verabscheuung, eines grösser Grads unserer Realität bewusst sind und dass dieses Bewusstsein nicht anders als angenehm sein kann? Folglich sind alle Leidenschaften, auch die allerunangenehmsten, als Leidenschaften angenehm.”[82] (“We are agreed in this, my dear friend, that all passions are either vehement cravings or vehement loathings, and also that in every vehement craving or loathing we acquire an increased consciousness of our reality, and that this consciousness cannot but be pleasurable. Consequently, all our passions, even the most painful, are, as passions, pleasurable.”) And Helvetius has expressed almost the same idea: “Nous souhaiterons donc, par des impressions toujours nouvelles, être à chaque instant avertis de notre existence, parceque chacun de ces avertissements est pour nous un plaisir.”[83] (“Accordingly, we shall desire, by means of constantly renewed impressions, to be at every moment reminded of our existence, because each of these reminders is for us a pleasure.”) For the sake of this “avertissement” of existence, individuals of intense vital temperament, like Richard Jefferies and Maryia Bashkirtseff, have positively loved their very sufferings.[84]

It is evident that pain as a sign of life and function may be especially welcome when the vital sensation has for any reason become weakened. The self-woundings of the heathen and Christian saints, although no doubt fully justified to the sufferers themselves by religious motives, may thus have had their innermost unconscious motive in an endeavour to overcome that anæsthesia which is so usual an accompaniment of hysterical disturbances.[85] It is hard to believe that the tortures which they inflict upon themselves are really felt as neutral or pleasurable. But we can easily understand that such torture, although more or less painful, may afford a kind of satisfaction by compelling the slow and dull senses to function. Professor Lange has in his work on the emotions laid special stress upon this point. “It is a condition of our well-being,” he says, “that our sensorial centres should be in a certain degree of activity called forth by the impressions which reach them through the sensorial nerves from the outside. If from some cause or other—for instance, from a decrease in the functional powers of these centres—there arises an insensibility, anæsthesia, then we feel a longing to force them to their usual activity by addressing to them an abnormally strong appeal, or, in other words, by intensifying the external impressions and thereby neutralising the insensibility.”[86] This principle has, indeed, as applied by Lange to the expressions of anger, been mercilessly ridiculed by Wundt.[87] But it seems to us that the observation itself can scarcely be contested. Whether we explain it as a case of the indispensability of the accustomed or as the result of some peculiar yearning for life—a soul-desire, as Mr. Jefferies would have called it—a deficient consciousness of function is in most cases distinctly unpleasant. And, on the other hand, it seems as if an increased consciousness of function were per se pleasurable. It is of course difficult to prove by exact argument the existence of a feeling which can be observed only as the innermost concealed motive of our life. But on as strong evidence as can ever be adduced on matters of emotional life, we may believe that in every conscious life there operates a dim instinctive craving for fuller and greater consciousness, or, if the expression be preferred, for the most complete self-realisation. Happiness itself has been defined by a philosopher so little inclined to mysticism as Mr. Brinton, as “the increasing consciousness of self.”[88] It is therefore easy to understand why, when this consciousness has been blunted by some cause or other, we may even long for suffering and pain as a means of escaping the dulness, emptiness, and darkness of insensibility. It may seem to be a disturbance of all normal instincts that pain—an element hostile to vital activity—can thus be preferred to a state the unpleasantness of which is only diffuse. But we have to remember that the absence of sensation and function frightens us by its similarity to what we fear more than pain.

The sufferings of insensibility, this highest possible form of tedium, which—if we are to judge from the descriptions in literature and poetry—may in themselves be unbearable enough, must needs be unusually keen in individuals who are given up to philosophic reflection. The feeling of inanity which is caused by a suspense of vital sensations is apt to spread itself over the whole field of sense-experience.[89] In default of strong impressions, with their subsequent reactions, we may lose the sense not only of our own existence, but also of that of the external world.[90] The relatively neutral evidence of our higher senses does not afford us the same assurance of reality as is given by grosser impressions, which affect us more directly in the way of pleasure or pain. On purely physiological grounds there may thus be produced a morbid conception of the universe which, having neither ego nor non-ego to rely on, lacks the conviction either of subjective or objective existence. From this vertiginous inanity, which must bring every philosophic temperament into despair, life delivers us by the same means which Molière uses to confute the Pyrrhonists. Pain is the most convincing reality we can imagine. It may therefore, even when it is not deliberately sought for, afford a welcome support to thought.

“Suffice it thee

Thy pain is a reality.”

(Tennyson, “The Two Voices”).

In this connection, however, we have not to dwell on the philosophical importance of pain. We are here only concerned with its significance for the immediate sense of life. And in this respect we believe that an artificial creation of pain may play some part not only in anger, but in the expression of all high-strung emotions. It is well known that the orgiastic state of mind, whether originally caused by religious exaltation or by erotic delirium, may often, when it has reached its highest stage, express itself in self-laceration. These facts are no doubt difficult to interpret. But it seems justifiable to assume that a tendency towards the creating of pain-sensations may have been derived from the emotional process itself. Explained in this way, orgiastic self-tortures may be adduced as the most remarkable proofs of this desire for an enhanced sense of life which lies at the bottom of all our appetence.

However energetically strong emotions may accentuate our existence, and however deeply we may enjoy the “realisation of ourselves” which we find in the violent excitement accompanying them, high-strung states are naturally bound to be followed by exhaustion and stupor. And thus even the intoxication of life, this most powerful of sensations, sooner or later passes its climax and sinks into dull insensibility. The lower the function by the incitement of which the exaltation is produced, the greater probably is its orgiastic power. But its duration is also so much the shorter. A wild dance, for instance, invariably ends in impotent prostration, during which the power of function and sensation is completely exhausted. As long as the mental desire for increased excitement is unsatisfied, this state must be distinctly disagreeable. Hence all the frenetic manifestations by which man, when raging in insatiable exaltation, strives to awake and rouse his failing powers of enjoyment.

In the whole domain of comparative psychology there can scarcely be adduced an example which throws so much light on the orgiastic state of mind as the Bacchanal frenzy. And the descriptions of this “Dionysischer Zustand” which are to be found in classic literature give us the most complete idea of the various expedients by which the devotee tries to maintain and increase his state of exaltation in spite of the growing tendency to relaxation. By noise, roaring, and loud cries, by frenetic dance and wild actions, the “Maenads” strive to preserve and recover the fading sense of life, which ever baffles their exertions. And as the last, infallible means of excitement, resorted to when all other stimulations have proved unable to stir up the dulled senses, we may explain the tortures which the partly insensible Bacchante inflicts upon herself. “Suum Bacchis non sentit saucia vulnus.”[91]

There are various kinds of orgiastic exaltation connected with self-torture—as that of the tarantella dancers, of the dervishes, of the shamans, and others—in which the creation of pain-sensations may be explained as a desperate device for enhancing the intensity of the emotional state. Acute pain often makes it possible to overcome momentarily the exhaustion or the dulness which unfits us for work. And it is evident that pain may produce a similar excitement when we require an increase of energy, not for the sake of obtaining the greatest possible result from a working activity, but for the sake of extracting the greatest possible enjoyment out of an emotional state.

But if this interpretation be admitted as possible, there will be ample room for discussion as to its application to individual cases. For it is to be remembered that even pain may fulfil the task of relieving a nervous tension. In cases of bodily suffering counter irritation may thus bring about a wholesome diversion of the attention from an otherwise unbearable pain.[92] And it is unquestionable that self-inflicted lacerations during violent emotion often subserve the same purpose. When a savage scarifies himself on receiving bad news, or at a funeral feast, his action is an instinctive effort to procure relief from the overpowering feelings.[93] That he is not simply performing a sacrificial rite,[94] but is merely seeking the relief which experience has taught him may be afforded by pain as well as by the subsequent exhaustion (especially from loss of blood), is proved by the fact that the same expedient is employed in order to overcome humiliation or bodily pain.[95] It is not stimulation, but a lulling of the senses, which is here aimed at.

It must also be admitted that even the other orgiastic manifestations may serve as purely cathartic means of relieving emotional pressure. It is, as has already been remarked, impossible to decide in individual cases whether an activity of expression—a dance, for instance—serves to enhance a pleasurable feeling or to relieve a pain. Suffering, sorrow, and despair may often, in their outward reactions, borrow the forms of expression which are usually connected with joy. Thus frenetic games and dances are often met with on occasions when we should least of all expect them, as, for instance, in time of famine, epidemic, or war.[96] Such paradoxical manifestations, in which an overstrained despair attempts to obtain some kind of relief, are externally not to be distinguished from the genuine expression of joy. On the other hand, an abnormally strong emotion, which is primarily caused by the objective conditions of pleasure, may in its excess be perceived as a pain. Joy itself can thus be felt as an oppressive burden, which we try with all our power to get rid of. The motor discharges, by which we seek relief from such a “Noth der Fülle und der Überfülle,” can, however, only indirectly offer us any real deliverance. A wild dance, for instance, will inevitably accentuate the original feeling as a conscious state, and thereby increase its intensity. But with this increase the craving for relief will also become stronger. As long as expression is unable to satisfy the ever-growing nervous tension, there must remain an element of “never enough” in the orgiastic exaltation. It is only when repeated solicitation has brought on bodily exhaustion that a real release is attained.

There is no doubt that such a relief-bringing exhaustion was the ultimate aim of all those exalted manifestations to which the poor tarantuli and the Vitus dancers abandoned themselves. But the problem presented by the similarity between the pathological despair which constitutes the initial stage of such epidemic mental disorders, and the oppressive feeling of joy whose expression has been thwarted, is so difficult that we can hardly expect to obtain a decisive answer to such questions as whether, for example, the mænadic exaltation is to be considered as a melancholic or a cheerful state of mind. And in most cases it would probably be equally impossible to ascertain whether in a given manifestation we have to do with pleasure that seeks enhancement, or with pain that seeks relief in exhaustion.

While every one is thus free to interpret the facts according to his optimistic or pessimistic bias, it must nevertheless be considered as a confusion of ideas to make the quest of unconsciousness a universal and fundamental impulse in man. It is impossible for us to assign any psychological importance to commonplaces on the enviable state of the insensible and the happiness to be found in unconsciousness. It is only when it delivers us from pain that a state of partial insensibility and cessation of function may be perceived as relatively agreeable. That an absolute absence of feeling could afford us any pleasure is a psychological contradiction in terms.

This illusion of unconsciousness can, however, be easily explained by the fact that intense emotional states are generally dominated by a single preoccupation. A strong feeling, by reason of the limitations of our consciousness, annihilates external sensations and ideas. Ecstasy, that “over-conscious” state of highly concentrated activity, rises above space and time to a state in which we feel liberated from all forms of perception. But the highest pleasure which we may thus experience is not, as Wagner in his pessimistic period would have it, a sinking and drowning of ourselves in unconsciousness; it is far rather—

“endlos ewig

einbewuszt.”

To enjoy so rich and complete a sensation of life has, we believe, been the object for which, each in his own manner, all men of strong vitality have striven. Even if there are individuals so unfortunate that for them a cessation of life and function appears as the highest end of desire, such negative instances need hardly be taken into account in a survey of universal human impulses. The longing for unconsciousness is moreover so passive a condition of mind, that by itself it could never explain expressional activities of the more violent or elaborate sort. And it is even more insufficient as an explanation of all those secondary expressions which are to occupy us in the sequel. Art production would never have reached so high a development if it had served only as a sedative for human feelings. But neither does art, any more than the direct activities of expression, involve mere excitement; it too fulfils, and with even greater efficacy, a relieving and cathartic mission. While supplying man with a means of intensifying the feelings connected with all the varied activities of the soul, art at the same time bestows upon him that inward calm in which all strong emotions find their relief.

Every interpretation of art which does not pay due attention to both of these aspects must needs be one-sided and incomplete.