to the text. The rolling waves of the Ehine — now how is that to he expressed in music? An evil gnome appears — how is the music to express an evil gnome? — and how is it to express the sensuality of this gnome? How will bravery, fire, or apples he expressed in music? How are the leit-motive of the people speaking to be interwoven with the leit-motive of the people and objects about whom they speak? Besides, the music has a further interest. It diverges from all formerly accepted laws, and most unexpected and totally new modulations crop up (as is not only possible but even easy in music having no inner Іалѵ of its being); the dissonances are new, and are alloлved in a new way — and this, too, is interesting.
And it is this poeticality, imitativeness, efFectfulness, and interestingness which, thanks to the peculiarities of Wagner’s talent and to the advantageous position in which he was placed, are in these productions carried to the highest pitch of perfection, that so act on the spectator, hypnotising him as one would be hypnotised who should listen for several consecutive hours to the ravings of a maniac pronounced with great oratorical power.
People say, “You cannot judge without having seen Wagner performed at Bayreuth: in the dark, where the orchestra is out of sight concealed under the stage, and where the performance is brought to the highest perfec- tion.” And this just proves that we have here no question of art, but one of hypnotism. It is just what the spiritu- alists say. To convince you of the reality of their appari- tions, they usually say, “You cannot judge; you must try it, be present at several seances,” i.e. come and sit silent in the dark for hours together in the same room with semi-sane people, and repeat this some ten times over, and you shall see all that we see.
Yes, naturally! Only place yourself in such conditions, and you may see what you will. But this can be still more ГѴЛАТ IS ART?
quickly attained by getting drunk or smoking opium. It is the same when listening to an opera of Wagner’s. Sit in the dark for four days in company with people who are not quite normal, and, through the auditory nerves, subject your brain to the strongest action of the sounds best adapted to excite it, and you will no doubt be reduced to an abnormal condition and be enchanted by absurdities. But to attain this end you do not even need four days; the five hours during which one “day” is enacted, as in Moscow, are quite enough. Nor are five hours needed; even one hour is enough for people who have no clear conception of what art should be, and who have come to the conclusion in advance that what they are going to see is excellent, and that indifference or dissatisfaction with this work will serve as a proof of their inferiority and lack of culture.
I observed the audience present at this representation. The people who led the whole audience and gave the tone to it were those who had previously been hypnotised, and who again succumbed to the hypnotic influence to which they were accustomed. These hypnotised people, being in an abnormal condition, were perfectly enraptured. Moreover, all the art critics, who lack the capacity to be infected by art and therefore always especially prize works like Wagner’s opera where it is all an affair of the intellect, also, with much profundity, expressed their approval of a work afford- ing such ample material for ratiocination. And following these two groups went that large city crowd (indifferent to art, with their capacity to be infected by it perverted and partly atrophied), headed by the princes, millionaires, and art patrons, who, like sorry harriers, keep close to those who most loudly and decidedly express their opinion.
“ Oh yes, certainly! What poetry! Marvellous! Especi- ally the birds!” “Yes, yes! I am quite vanquished!” exclaim these people, repeating in various tones Avhat they WHAT IS ATT?
have just heard from men whose opinion appears to them authoritative.
If some people do feel insulted by the absurdity and spuriousness of the whole thing, they are timidly silent, as sober men are timid and silent when surrounded by tipsy ones.
And thus, thanks to the masterly skill with which it counterfeits art while having nothing in common with it, a meaningless, coarse, spurious production finds acceptance all over the world, costs millions of roubles to produce, and assists more and more to pervert the taste of people of the upper classes and their conception of what is art.
CHAPTEE XIY I KNOW that most men — not only those considered clever, hut even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical or philosophic problems — can very seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it he such as to oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives. And therefore I have little hope that what I adduce as to the perversion of art and taste in our society will be accepted or even seriously considered. JSTevertheless, I must state fully the inevitable conclusion to which my investigation into the question of art has brought me. This investigation has brought me to the conviction that almost all that our society considers to be art, good art, and the whole of art, far from being real and good art, and the whole of art, is not even art at all, but only a counterfeit of it. This position, I know, will seem very strange and paradoxical; but if we once acknow- ledge art to be a human activity by means of which some people transmit their feelings to others (and not a service of Beauty, nor a manifestation of the Idea, and so forth), we shall inevitably have to admit this further conclusion also. If it is true that art is an activity by means of which one man having experienced a feeling intentionally transmits it to others, then we have inevitably to admit further, that of all that among us is termed the art of the upper classes — of all WHAT IS ART?
those novels, stories, dramas, comedies, pictures, sculptures, symphonies, operas, operettas, ballets, etc., which profess to be works of art — scarcely one in a hundred thousand pro- ceeds from an emotion felt by its author, all the rest being but manufactured counterfeits of art in ivhich borrowing, imitating, effects, and interestingness replace the con- tagion of feeling. That the proportion of real productions of art is to the counterfeits as one to some hundreds of thousands or even more, may be seen by the following calculation. I have read somewhere that the artist painters in Paris alone number 30,000; there will probably be as many in England, as many in Germany, and as many in Eussia, Italy, and the smaller states combined. So that in all there will be in Europe, say, 120,000 painters; and there are probably as many musicians and as many literary artists. If these 360,000 individuals produce three works a year each (and many of them produce ten or more), then each year yields over a million so-called works of art. How many, then, must have been produced in the last ten years, and how many in the whole time since upper-class art broke off from the art of the whole people % Evidently millions. Yet who of all the connoisseurs of art has received impressions from all these pseudo works of art? Hot to mention all the labour- ing classes who have no conception of these productions, even people of the upper classes cannot know one in a thousand of them all, and cannot remember those they have known. These works all appear under the guise of art, produce no impression on anyone (except when they serve as pastimes for the idle crowd of rich people), and vanish utterly.
In reply to this it is usually said that without this enormous number of unsuccessful attempts we should not have the real works of art. But such reasoning is as though a baker, in reply to a reproach that his bread was bad, were to say that if it were not for the hundreds of spoiled loaves WHAT IS ART?
there would not be any well-baked ones. It is true that where there is gold there is also much sand j hut that can not serve as a reason for talking a lot of nonsense in order to say something wise.
We are surrounded by productions considered artistic. Thousands of verses, thousands of poems, thousands of novels, thousands of dramas, thousands of pictures, thousands of musical pieces, follow one after another. All the verses describe love, or nature, or the author’s state of mind, and in all of them rhyme and rhythm are observed. All the dramas and comedies are splendidly mounted and are per- formed by admirably trained actors. All the novels are divided into chapters; all of them describe love, contain effective situations, and correctly describe the details of life. All the symphonies contain allegro, andante, scherzo, and finale; all consist of modulations and chords, and are played by highly-trained musicians. All the pictures, in gold frames, saliently depict faces and sundry accessories. But among these productions in the various branches of art there is in each branch one among hundreds of thousands, not only somewhat better than the rest, hut differing from them as a diamond differs from paste. The one is priceless, the others not only have no value hut are worse than valueless, for they deceive and pervert taste. And yet, externally, they are, to a man of perverted or atrophied artistic perception, precisely alike.
In our society the difficulty of recognising real works of art is further increased by the fact that the external quality of the work in false productions is not only no worse, hut often better, than in real ones; the counterfeit is often more effective than the real, and its subject more interesting. How is one to discriminate? How is one to find a production in no way distinguished in externals from hundreds of thou- sands of others intentionally made to imitate it precisely?
For a country peasant of unperverted taste this is as lO WHAT IS ART?
easy as it is for an animal of unspoilt scent to follow the trace he needs among a thousand others in wood or forest. The animal unerringly finds what he needs. So also the man, if only his natural qualities have not heeii perverted, will, without fail, select from among thousands of objects the real work of art he requires — that infecting him with the feeling experienced by the artist. But it is not so with those whose taste has been perverted by their education and life. The receptive feeling for art of these people is atrophied, and in valuing artistic productions they must he guided by discussion and study, which discus- sion and study completely confuse them. So that most people in our society are quite unable to distinguish a work of art from the grossest counterfeit. People sit for whole hours in concert-rooms and theatres listening to the new composers, consider it a duty to read the novels of the famous modern novelists and to look at pictures represent- ing either something incomprehensible or just the very things they see much better in real life; and, above all, they consider it incumbent on them to be enraptured by all this, imagining it all to he art, while at the same time they will pass real works of art by, not only without attention, hut even with contempt, merely because, in their circle, these ^orks are not included in the list of works of art.
A few days ago I was returning home from a walk feeling depressed, as occurs sometimes. On nearing the house I heard the loud singing of a large choir of peasant women. They were welcoming my daughter, celebrating her return home after her marriage. In this singing, with its cries and clanging of scythes, such a definite feeling of joy, cheerfulness, and energy was expressed, that, without noticing how it infected me, I continued my way towards the house in a better mood, and reached home smiling and quite in good spirits. That same evening, a visitor, an WHAT IS ART?
admirable musician, famed for his execution of classical music, and particularly of BeethoYen, played us Beethoven’s sonata, Opus 101. For the benefit of those who might otherwise attribute my j'udgment of that sonata of Beethoven to non-comprehension of it, I should mention that whatever other people understand of that sonata and of other productions of Beethoven’s later period, I, being very susceptible to music, equally understood. For a long time I used to atune myself so as to delight in those shapeless improvisations which form the subject-matter of the works of Beethoven’s later period, but I had only to consider the question of art seriously, and to compare the impression I received from Beethoven’s later works with those pleasant, clear, and strong musical impressions which are transmitted, for instance, by the melodies of Bach (his arias), Haydn, Mozart, Chopin (when his melodies are not overloaded with complications and ornamention), and of Beethoven himself in his earlier period, and above all, with the impressions produced by folk-songs, — Italian, Norwegian, or Russian, — by the Hungarian tzar das, and other such simple, clear, and powerful music, and the obscure, almost unhealthy excitement from Beethoven’s later pieces that I had artificially evoked in myself was immediately destroyed.
On the completion of the performance (though it was noticeable that everyone had become dull) those present, in the accepted manner, warmly praised Beethoven’s profound production, and did not forget to add that formerly they had not been able to understand that last period of his, but that they now saw that he was really then at his very best. And when I ventured to compare the impression made on me by the singing of the peasant women — an impression which had been shared by all who heard it — with the effect of this sonata, the admirers of Beethoven only smiled contemptuously, not considering it necessary to reply to such strange remarks.
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But, for all that, the song of the peasant women was real art, transmitting a definite and strong feeling; while the 101st sonata of Beethoven was only an unsuccessful attempt at art, containing no definite feeling and therefore not infectious.
For my work on art I have this winter read diligently, though with great effort, the celebrated novels and stories, praised by all Europe, written by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans, and Kipling. At the same time I chanced on a story in a child’s magazine, and by a quite unknown writer, which told of the Easter preparations in a poor widow’s family. The story tells how the mother managed with difficulty to obtain some wheat-flour, which she poured on the table ready to knead. She then went out to procure some yeast, telling the children not to leave the hut, and to take care of the flour. When the mother had gone, some other children ran shouting near the window, calling those in the hut to come to play. The children forgot their mother’s warning, ran into the street, and were soon engrossed in the game. The mother, on her return with the yeast, finds a hen on the table throwing the last of the flour to her chickens, who were busily picking it out of the dust of the earthen floor. The mother, in despair, scolds the children, who cry bitterly. And the mother begins to feel pity for them — but the white flour has all gone. So to mend matters she decides to make the Easter cake with sifted rye-flour, brushing it over with white of egg and surrounding it with eggs. “Eye-bread which we bake is akin to any cake,” says the mother, using a rhyming proverb to console the children for not having an Easter cake made with white flour. And the children, quickly passing from despair to rapture, repeat the proverb and await the Easter cake more merrily even than before.
Well! the reading of the novels and stories by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans, Kipling, and others, handling the most WHAT IS ART?
harrowing subjects, did not touch me for one moment, and I was provoked with the authors all the while, as one is provoked with a man who considers you so naive that he does not even conceal the trick by which he intends to take you in. From the first lines you see the intention with which the hook is written, and the details all become super- fluous, and one feels dull. Above all, one knows that the author had no other feeling all the time than a desire to write a story or a novel, and so one receives no artistic im- pression. On the other hand, I could not tear myself away from the unknown author’s tale of the children and the chickens, because I was at once infected by the feeling which the author had evidently experienced, re-evoked in himself, and transmitted.
Yasnetsoff is one of our Russian painters. He has painted ecclesiastical pictures in Kieff Cathedral, and everyone praises him as the founder of some new, elevated kind of Christian art. He worked at those pictures for ten years, was paid tens of thousands of roubles for them, and they are all simply bad imitations of imitations of imitations, destitute of any spark of feeling. And this same Yasnetsoff drew a picture for Tourgenieff’s story “The Quail” (in which it is told how, in his son’s presence, a father killed a quail and felt pity for it), showing the boy asleep with pouting upper lip, and above him, as a dream, the quail. And this picture is a true work of art.
In the English Academy of 1897 two pictures were exhibited together; one of which, by J. C. Dolman, was the temptation of St. Anthony. The Saint is on his knees praying. Behind him stands a naked woman and animals of some kind. It is apparent that the naked woman pleased the artist very much, but that Anthony did not concern him at all; and that, so far from the temptation being terrible to him (the artist) it is highly agreeable. And therefore if there be any art in this picture, it is very nasty and false.
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Next in the same book of academy pictures comes a picture by Langley, showing a stray beggar boy, who has evidently been called in by a woman who has taken j^ity on him. The boy, pitifully drawing his bare feet under the bench, is eating j the woman is looking on, probably considering whether he will not want some more; and a girl of about seven, leaning on her arm, is carefully and seriously looking on, not taking her eyes from the hungry boy, and evidently understanding for the first time what poverty is, and what inequality among people is, and asking herself why she. has everything provided for her while this boy goes bare-foot and hungry? She feels sorry and yet pleased. And she loves both the boy and goodness...And one feels that the artist loved this girl, and that she too loves. And this picture, by an artist who, I think, is not very \videly known, is an admirable and true work of art.
I remember seeing a performance of Hamlet by Eossi. Both the tragedy itself and the performer who took the chief part are considered by our critics to represent the climax of supreme dramatic art. And yet, both from the subject-matter of the drama and from the performance, I experienced all the time that peculiar suffering which is caused by false imitations of works of art. And I lately read of a theatrical performance among the savage tribe the Voguls. A spectator describes the play. A big Yogul and a a little one, both dressed in reindeer skins, represent a rein- deer-doe and its young. A third Yogul, with a bow, repre- sents a huntsman on snow-shoes, and a fourth imitates with his voice a bird that warns the reindeer of their danger. The play is that the huntsman follows the track that the doe with its young one has travelled. The deer run off the scene and again reappear. (Such performances take place* in a small tent-house.) The huntsman gains more and more on the pursued. The little deer is tired, and presses against its mother. The doe stops to draw breath. The hunter WHAT IS ART?
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comes up with them and draws his how. But just then the bird sounds its note, warning the deer of their danger. They escape. Again there is a chase, and again the hunter gains on them, catches them and lets fly his arrow. The arrow strikes the young deer. Unable to run, the little one presses against its mother. The mother licks its wound. The hunter draws another arrow. The audience, as the eye-witness describes them, are paralysed with suspense j deep groans and even weeping is heard among them. And, from the mere description, I felt that this was a true work of art.
What I am saying will he considered irrational paradox, at which one can only he amazed; hut for all that I must say what I think, namely, that people of our circle, of whom some compose verses, stories, novels, operas, symphonies, and sonatas, paint all kinds of pictures and make statues, while others hear and look at these things, and again others appraise and criticise it all, discuss, condemn, triumph, and raise monuments to one another generation after generation, — that all these people, with very few exceptions, artists, and public, and critics, have never (except in childhood and earliest youth, before hearing any discussions on art), ex- perienced that simple feeling familiar to the plainest man and even to a child, that sense of infection with another’s feeling, — compelling us to joy in another’s gladness, to sorrow at another’s grief, and to mingle souls with another, — which is the very essence of art. And therefore these people not only cannot distinguish true works of art from counterfeits, hut continually mistake for real art the worst and most artificial, while they do not even perceive works of real art, because the counterfeits are always more ornate, while true art is modest.
CHAPTER XY CHAPTER XY Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has had art come to he considered good, but even the very per- ception of what art really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art from counterfeit art.
There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man, without exercising effort and without altering his standpoint, on reading, hearing, or seeing another man’s work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of art. And however poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy, and of spiritual union with another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by it).
It is true that this indication is an internal one, and that there are people who have forgotten what the action of real art is, who expect something else from art (in our society the great majority are in this state), and that therefore such people may mistake for this aesthetic feeling the feeling of divertisement and a certain excitement which they receive from counterfeits of art. But though it is impossible to undeceive these people, just as it is impossible to convince a man suffering from “Daltonism” that green is not red, yet, for all that, this indication remains perfectly definite WHAT IS ART?
to those whose feeling for art is neither perverted nor atrophied, and it clearly distinguishes the feeling produced by art from all other feelings.
The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else’s, — as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between him- self and the artist, nor that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.
If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the author and with others лѵЬо are moved by the same work — then it is not art. And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.
The stronger the infection the better is the art, as art, speaking now apart from its subject-matter, i.e. not con- sidering the quality of the feelings it transmits.
And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions: — (1) On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted; (2) on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is transmitted; (3) on the sincerity of the artist, i.e. on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits.
The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly does it act on the receiver; the more individual the state of soul into which he is transferred the more WHAT IS ART?
pleasure does the receiver obtain, and therefore the more readily and strongly does he join in it.