All the other productions of these poets are equally un- intelligible, or can only be understood with great difficulty, and then not fully. All the productions of those hundreds of poets, of whom I have named a few, are the same in kind. And among the Germans, Sлvedes, Norwegians, Italians, and us Russians, similar verses are printed. And such produc- tions are printed and made up into book form, if not by the million, then by the hundred thousand (some of these works sell in tens of thousands). For type-setting, paging, printing, and binding these books, millions and millions of working days are spent — not less, I think, than went to build the ^ For translation, see Appendix IV.
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95 great pyramid. And this is not all. The same is going on in all the other arts: millions and millions of working days are being spent on the production of equally incomprehensible works in painting, in music, and in the drama.
Painting not only does not lag behind poetry in this matter, hut rather outstrips it. Here is an extract from the diary of an amateur of art, written when visiting the Paris exhibitions in 1894: — “ I was to-day at three exhibitions: the Symbolists’, the Impressionists’, and the Heo-Impressionists’. I looked at the pictures conscientiously and carefully, hut again felt the same stupefaction and ultimate indignation. The first exhibition, that of Camille Pissarro, was comparatively the most comprehensible, though the pictures were out of drawing, had no subject, and the colourings were most improbable. The drawing was so indefinite that you were sometimes unable to make out which лѵау an arm or a head was turned. The subject was generally, ‘ effets ’ — Effet de brouillard^ Effet du soir, Soleil coucliant. There were some pictures лѵШі figures, but without subjects.
“In the colouring, bright blue and bright green predomi- nated. And each picture had its special colour, with which the whole picture was, as it were, splashed. For instance in ‘ A Girl guarding Geese ’ the special colour is vert de gris, and dots of it were splashed about everywhere: on the face, the hair, the hands, and the clothes. In the same gallery — ‘ Durand Ruel ’ — were other pictures, by Puvis de Chavannes, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley — лѵію are all Impressionists. One of them, whose name I could not make out, — it was something like Redon, — had i)ainted a blue face in inofile. On the лѵЬоІе face there is only this blue tone, Avith white- of-lead. Pissarro has an aquarelle all done in dots. In the foreground is a cow entirely painted лѵіііі various-coloured dots. The general colour cannot be distinguished, however 9б WHAT IS ART?
9б WHAT IS ART?
much one stands back from, or draws near to, the picture. From there I went to see the Symbolists. I looked at ther it long without asking anyone for an explanation, trying 1 1 guess the meaning; hut it is beyond human comprehensior v One of the first things to catch my eye was a wooden hau relief f wretchedly executed, representing a woman (nakec.) who with both hands is squeezing from her two hreas1j> streams of blood. The blood flows do\vn, becoming lilac ijft colour. Her hair first descends and then rises again a; turns into trees. The figure is all coloured yellow, and tl hair is brown. | “Next — a picture: a yellow sea, on which swims somethirte which is neither a ship nor a heart; on the horizon is ia profile лѵЬЬ a halo and yellow hair, which changes into a se^ in which it is lost. Some of the painters lay on thejy colours so thickly that the effect is something between painting and sculpture. A third exhibit was even lei^ comprehensible: a man’s profile; before him a flame and black stripes — leeches, as I was afterAvards told. At last; asked a gentleman who was there Avhat it meant, and explained to me that the liaut-relief Avas a symbol, and thst it represented ’‘La Terre.’’ The heart SAvimming in a yelloAf sea was ‘ Illusion perdue, and the gentleman Avith the leeche I Avas ‘ Le Mol.’ There were also some Impressionist pictures Г elementary profiles, holding some sort of flowers in theip hands: in monotone, out of drawing, and either quite blurr^c I or else marked out with wide black outlines.” ' This was in 1894; the same tendency is now even more strongly defined, and we have Bocklin, Stuck, Klinger^ Sasha Schneider, and others.;, The same thing is taking place in the drama. The play^' Avriters give us an architect who, for some reason, has npi! fulfilled his former high intentions, and who consequent!; climbs on to the roof of a house he has erected and tumblpj doAvn head foremost; or an incomprehensible old woma] V и 1 ■I N I- I f WHAT IS ART?
97 (w|io exterminates rats), and who, for an unintelligible Sftjson, takes a poetic child to the sea and there drowns l; or some blind men, who, sitting on the seashore, for ae reason always repeat one and the same thing; or a hell of j some kind, which flies into a lake and there rings.
And the same is happening in music — in that art which, m^re than any other, one would have thought, should he in: ielligihle to everybody.
'An acquaintance of yours, a musician of repute, sits down ■ the piano and plays you what he says is a new com- 1 po sition of his own, or of one of the new composers. You hear the strange, loud sounds, and admire the gymnastic BSiercises performed hy his fingers; and you see that the pirformer wishes to impress upon you that the sounds he is I producing express various poetic strivings of the soul. You . бф his intention, but no feeling whatever is transmitted to ^ ypu except weariness. The execution lasts long, or at least V seems very long to you, because you do not receive any fir impression, and involuntarily you remember the words ^.Iphonse Karr, “ Plus pa ш vite^ plus pa dure longtempsP^ d it occurs to you that perhaps it is all a mystification^ haps the performer is trying you — ^just throwing his \ ids and fingers wildly about the key-hoard in the hope t you will fall into the trap and praise him, and then ' li|j will laugh and confess that he only wanted to see if ^hK could hoax you. But when at last the piece does j ft5(ish, and the perspiring and agitated musician rises from thlp piano evidently anticipating praise, you see that it was alii done in earnest.
i: '^he same thing takes place at all the concerts with pieces ' Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz, Brahms, and (newest of all) ■feifhard Strauss, and the numberless other composers of ‘ ЬШ new school, who unceasingly produce opera after opera, •4^J^phony after symphony, piece after piece.
1 The quicker it goes the longer it lasts.
7 98 WHAT IS ART?
The same is occurring in a domain in which it seemed hard to be unintelligible — in the sphere of novels and short stories.
Eead La-Bas by Huysmans, or some of Kipling’s short stories, or Vannonciateur by Yilliers de I’lsle Adam in his Contes Cruets, etc., and you will find them not only “ abscons ” (to use a word adopted by the new writers), but absolutely unintelligible both in form and in substance. Such, again, is the work by E. Morel, Terre Promise, now appearing in the Revue Blanche, and such are most of the new novels. The style is very high-flown, the feelings seem to be most elevated, but you can’t make out what is happening, to whom it is happening, and where it is happen- ing. And such is the bulk of the young art of our time.
People who grew up in the first half of this century, admiring Goethe, Schiller, Musset, Hugo, Dickens, Beethoven, Chopin, Eaphael, di Vinci, Michael Angelo, Delaroche, being unable to make head or tail of this new art, simply attribute its productions to tasteless insanity and wish to ignore them. But such an attitude towards this new art is quite unjustifiable, because, in the first place, that art is spreading more and more, and has already conquered for itself a firm position in society, similar to the one occupied by the Eomanticists in the third decade of this century; and secondly and chiefly, because, if it is permissible to judge in this way of the productions of the latest form of art, called by us Decadent art, merely because we do not understand it, then remember, there are an enormous number of people, — all the labourers and many of the non-labouring folk, — who, in just the same way, do not comprehend those productions of art which we consider admirable: the verses of our favourite artists — Goethe, Schiller, and Hugo; the novels of Dickens, the music of Beethoven and Chopin, the pictures of Eaphael, Michael Angelo, di Vinci, etc.
If I have a right to think that great masses of people do WHAT IS ART?
99 not understand and do not like what I consider undoubtedly good because they are not sufficiently developed, then I have no right to deny that perhaps the reason why I can- not understand and cannot like the new productions of art, is merely that I am still insufficiently developed to understand them. If I have a right to say that I, and the majority of people who are in sympathy, with me, do not understand the productions of the new art simply because there is nothing in it to understand and because it is bad art, then, with just the same right, the still larger majority, the whole labouring mass, who do not understand what I consider admirable art, can say that what I reckon as good art is bad art, and there is nothing in it to understand.
I once saw the injustice of such condemnation of the new art with especial clearness, when, in my presence, a certain poet, who writes incomprehensible verses, ridiculed incom- prehensible music with gay self-assurance; and, shortly after- wards, a certain musician, who composes incomprehensible symphonies, laughed at incomprehensible poetry with equal self-confidence. I have no right, and no authority, to condemn the new art on the ground that I (a man educated in the first half of the century) do not understand it; I can only say that it is incomprehensible to me. The only advantage the art I acknowledge has over the Decadent art, lies in the fact that the art I recognise is comprehensible to a somewhat larger number of people than the present- day art.
Because I am accustomed to a certain exclusive art, and can understand it, but am unable to understand another still more exclusive art, I have no right to conclude that my art is the real true art, and that the other one, which I do not understand, is an unreal, a bad art. I can only conclude that art, becoming ever more and more exclusive, has become more and more incomprehensible to an ever-increasing number of people, and that, in this its ІОО WHAT IS ART?
ІОО WHAT IS ART?
progress towards greater and greater incomprehensibility (on one level of which I am standing, with the art familiar to me), it has reached a point where it is understood by a very small number of the elect, and the number of these chosen people is ever becoming smaller and smaller.
As soon as ever the art of the upper classes separated itself from universal art, a conviction arose that art may be art and yet be incomprehensible to the masses. And as soon as this position was admitted, it had inevitably to be admitted also that art may be intelligible only to the very smallest number of the elect, and, event- ually, to two, or to one, of our nearest friends, or to one- self alone. Which is practically what is being said by modern artists: — “ I create and understand myself, and if anyone does not understand me, so much the worse for him.”
The assertion that art may be good art, and at the same time incomprehensible to a great number of people, is ex- tremely unjust, and its consequences are ruinous to art itself; but at the same time it is so common and has so eaten into our conceptions, that it is impossible sufficiently to elucidate all the absurdity of it.
Nothing is more common than to hear it said of reputed works of art, that they are very good but very difficult to understand. We are quite used to such assertions, and yet to say that a work of art is good, but incomprehen- sible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it. The majority of men may not like rotten cheese or putrefying grouse — dishes esteemed by people with perverted tastes; but bread and fruit are only good when they please the majority of men. And it is the same with art. Perverted art may not please the majority of men, but good art always pleases everyone.
It is said that the very best works of art are such that WHAT IS ART?
lOI they cannot be understood by the mass, but are accessible only to the elect who are prepared to understand these great works. But if the majority of men do not understand, the knowledge necessary to enable them to understand should be taught and explained to them. But it turns out that there is no such knowledge, that the works cannot be explained, and that those who say the majority do not understand good works of art, still do not explain those works, but only tell us that, in order to understand them, one must read, and see, and hear these same works over and over again. But this is not to explain, it is only to habituate! And people may habituate themselves to any- thing, even to the very worst things. As people may habitu- ate themselves to bad food, to spirits, tobacco, and opium, just in the same way they may habituate themselves to bad art — and that is exactly what is being done.
Moreover, it cannot be said that the majority of people lack the taste to esteem the highest works of art. The majority always have understood, and still understand, what we also recognise as being the very best art: the epic of Genesis, the Gospel parables, folk-legends, fairy-tales, and folk-songs are understood by all. How can it be that the majority has suddenly lost its capacity to understand what is high in our art Of a speech it may be said that it is admirable, but in- comprehensible to those who do not know the language in which it is delivered. A speech delivered in Chinese may be excellent, and may yet remain incomprehensible to me if I do not know Chinese; but what distinguishes a work of art from all other mental activity is just the fact that its language is understood by all, and that it infects all Avithout distinction. The tears and laughter of a Chinese infect me just as the laughter and tears of a Russian; and it is the same with painting and music and poetry, when it is trans- lated into a language I understand. The songs of a Kirghiz WHAT IS ART?
WHAT IS ART?
or of a Japanese touch me, though in a lesser degree than they touch a Kirghiz or a Japanese. I am also touched by Japanese painting, Indian architecture, and Arabian stories. If I am hut little touched by a Japanese song and a Chinese novel, it is not that I do not understand these productions, hut that I know and am accustomed to higher works of art. It is not because their art is above me. Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and compre- hensible to everyone. The story of Joseph, translated into the Chinese language, touches a Chinese. The story of Sakya Muni touches us. And there are, and must be, buildings, pictures, statues, and music of similar power. So that, if art fails to move men, it cannot be said that this is due to the spectators’ or hearers’ lack of understanding; but the con- clusion to be drawn may, and should be, that such art is either bad art, or is not art at all.
Art is d^erentiated from activity of the understanding, whTcli demands preparation and a certain sequence of know- ledge (so that one cannot learn trigonometry before knowing geometry), by the fact that it acts on people independently of their state of develojment and education, that the charm of a picture, of sounds, or of forms, infects any man whatever his plane of development.
The business of art lies just in this — to make that under- stood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible. Usually it seems to the recipient of a truly artistic impression that he knew the thing before.but had been unable to express it.
And such has always been the nature of good, supreme art; the Iliad, the Odyssey, the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the Hebrew prophets, the psalms, the Gospel parables, the story of Sakya Muni, and the hymns of the Vedas: all transmit very elevated feelings, and are nevertheless quite compre- hensible now to us, educated or uneducated, as they were com- prehensible to the men of those times, long ago, who were WHAT IS ART?
WHAT IS ART?
even less educated than our labourers. People talk about incomprehensibility; but if art is the transmission of feelings flowing from man’s religious perception, bow can a feeling be incomprehensible ' which is founded on religion, i,e. on man’s relation to God % Such art should be, and has actually, always been, comprehensible to everybody, because every man’s relation to God is one and the same. And therefore the churches and the images in them were always compre- hensible to everyone. The hindrance to understanding the best and highest feelings (as is said in the gospel) does not at all lie in deficiency of development or learning, but, on the contrary, in false development and false learning. A good and lofty work of art may be incomprehensible, but not to simple, unperverted peasant labourers (all that is highest is understood by them) — it may be, and often is, unintelligible to erudite, perverted people destitute of religion. And this continually occurs in our society, in which the highest feelings are simply not understood. For instance, I know people who consider themselves most refined, and who say that they do not understand the poetry of love to one’s neighbour, of self-sacrifice, or of chastity.
So that good, great, universal, religious art may be incom- prehensible to a small circle of spoilt people, but certainly not to any large number of plain men.
Art cannot be incomprehensible to the great masses only because it is very good, — as artists of our day are fond of telling us. Father we are bound to conclude that this art is unintelligible to the great masses only because it is very bad art, or even is not art at all. So that the favourite argument (naively accepted by the cultured crowd), that in order to feel art one has first to understand it (which really only means habituate oneself to it), is the truest indication that what we are asked to understand by such a method is either very bad, exclusive art, or is not art at all.
И^ЛАТ IS ART?
People say that works of art do not please the people because they are incapable of understanding them. But if the aim of works of art is to infect people with the emotion the artist has experienced, how can one talk about not understanding?
A man of the people reads a book, sees a picture, hears a play or a symphony, and is touched by no feeling. He is told that this is because he cannot understand. People promise to let a man see a certain show; he enters and sees nothing. He is told that this is because his sight is not prepared for this show. But the man well knows that he sees quite well, and if he does not see what people promised to show him, he only concludes (as is quite just) that those who undertook to show him the spectacle have not fulfilled their engagement. And it is perfectly just for a man who does feel the influence of some works of art to come to this conclusion concerning artists who do not, by their works, evoke feeling in him. To say that the reason a man is not touched by my art is because he is still too stupid, besides being very self-conceited and also rude, is to reverse the roles, and for the sick to send the hale to bed.
Voltaire said that “Tows les genres sont bons^ hors le genre ennuyeux ” j ^ but with even more right one may say of art that Tons les genres sons hons^ hors celui qiTon ne comprend pas^ or qui ne produit pas son effet^^ for of what value is an article which fails to do that for which it was intended?
Mark this above all: if only it be admitted that art may be art and yet be unintelligible to anyone of sound mind, there is no reason why any circle of perverted people should not compose works tickling their own perverted feelings and comprehensible to no one but themselves, and ^ All styles are good except the wearisome style.
^ All styles are good except that which is not understood, or which fails to produce its effect.
ІѴЛА7' IS ART?
call it “ art,” as is actually being done by the so-called Decadents.
The direction art has taken may be compared to placing on a large circle other circles, smaller and smaller, until a cone is formed, the top of which is no longer a circle at all. That is what has happened to the art of our times.
CHAPTER XI Becoming ever poorer and poorer in subject-matter and more and more unintelligible in form, the art of tbe upper classes, in its latest productions, has even lost all the characteristics of art, and has been replaced by imitations of art. Xot only has upper-class art, in consequence of its separation from universal art, become poor in subject-matter and bad in form, i.e. ever more and more unintelligible, it has, in course of time, ceased even to be art at all, and has been replaced by counterfeits.
This has resulted from the following causes. Universal art arises only when some one of the people, having experienced a strong emotion, feels the necessity of transmitting it to others. The art of the rich classes, on the other hand, arises not from the artist’s inner impulse, but chiefly because people of the upper classes demand amusement and pay well for it. They demand from art the transmission of feelings that please them, and this demand artists try to meet. But it is a very difficult task, for people of the wealthy classes, spending their lives in idleness and luxury, desire to be continually diverted by art; and art, even the lowest, cannot be produced at will, but has to generate spontaneously in the artist’s inner self. And therefore, to satisfy the demands of people of the upper classes, artists have had to devise methods of producing imitations of art. And such methods have been devised.
These methods are those of (1) borrowing, (2) imitating, (3) striking (effects), and (4) interesting.
WHAT IS ART?
The first method consists in borrowing whole subjects, or merely separate features, from former works recognised by every- one as being poetical, and in so re-shaping them, with sundry additions, that they should have an appearance orf novelty.
Such works, evoking in people of a certain class memories of artistic feelings formerly experienced, produce an impres- sion similar to art, and, provided only that they conform to other needful conditions, they pass for art among those who seek for pleasure from art. Subjects borrowed from previous works of art are usually called poetical subjects. Objects and people thus borrowed are called poetical objects and people. Thus, in our circle, all sorts of legends, sagas, and ancient traditions are considered poetical subjects. Among poetical people and objects we reckon maidens, warriors, shepherds, hermits, angels, devils of all sorts, moon- light, thunder, mountains, the sea, precipices, flowers, long hair, lions, lambs, doves, and nightingales. In general, all those objects are considered poetical which have been most frequently used by former artists in their productions.
Some forty years ago a stupid but highly cultured — aya7it heaucoup d’acquis — lady (since deceased) asked me to listen to a novel written by herself. It began with a heroine who, in a poetic white dress, and with poetically flowing hair, was reading poetry near some water in a poetic wood. The scene was in Eussia, but suddenly from behind the bushes the hero appears, wearing a hat with a feather d la Guillaume Tell (the book specially mentioned this) and accompanied by two poetical white dogs. The authoress deemed all this highly poetical, and it might have passed muster if only it had not been necessary for the hero to speak. But as soon as the gentleman in the hat d la Guillaume Tell began to converse with the maiden in the white dress, it became obvious that the authoress had nothing to say, but had merely been moved by poetic memories of other works, and imagined that by ringing the io8 WHAT IS ART?
io8 WHAT IS ART?
changes on those memories she could produce an artistic impression. But an artistic impression, i.e. infection, is only received when an author has, in the manner peculiar to himself, experienced the feeling which he transmits, and not when he passes on another man’s feeling previously transmitted to him. Such poetry from poetry cannot infect people, it can only simulate a work of art, and even that only to people of perverted aesthetic taste. The lady in question being very stupid and devoid of talent, it was at once apparent how the case stood; hut when such borroлving is resorted to by people who are erudite and talented and have cultivated the technique of their art, we get those borrow- ings from the Greek, the antique, the Christian or mytho- logical world which have become so numerous, and which, particularly in our day, continue to increase and multiply, and are accepted by the public as works of art, if only the borrowings are well mounted by means of the technique of the particular art to which they belong.
As a characteristic example of such counterfeits of art in the realm of poetry, take Eostand’s Princesse Lointainey in which there is not a spark of art, hut which seems very poetical to many people, and probably also to its author.
The second method of imparting a semblance of art is that which I have called imitating. The essence of this method consists in supplying details accompanying the thing described or depicted. In literary art this method consists in describing, in the minutest details, the external appear- ance, the faces, the clothes, the gestures, the tones, and the habitations of the characters represented, with all the occur- rences met with in life. For instance, in novels and stories, when one of the characters speaks we are told in what voice he spoke, and what he was doing at the time. And the things said are not given so that they should have as much sense as possible, but, as they are in life, disconnectedly, and with interruptions and omissions. In dramatic art.
WHAT IS ART?
WHAT IS ART?
besides such imitation of real speech, this method consists in having all the accessories and all the people just like those in real life. In painting this method assimilates painting to photography and destroys the difference between them. And, strange to say, this method is used also in music: music tries to imitate not only by its rhythm but also by its very sounds, the sounds which in real life accom- pany the thing it wishes to represent.
The third method is by action, often purely physical, on the outer senses. Work of this kind is said to be “ striking,” “effectful.” In all arts these effects consist chiefly in con- trasts; in bringing together the terrible and the tender, the beautiful and the hideous, the loud and the soft, darkness and light, the most ordinary and the most extraordinary. In verbal art, besides effects of contrast, there are also effects consisting in the description of things that have never before been described. These are usually pornographic details evoking sexual desire, or details of suffering and death evoking feelings of horror, as, for instance, when describing a murder, to give a detailed medical account of the lacerated tissues, of the swellings, of the smell, quantity and appear- ance of the blood. It is the same in painting: besides all kinds of other contrasts, one is coming into vogue which consists in giving careful finish to one object and being careless about all the rest. The chief and usual effects in painting are effects of light and the depiction of the horrible. In the drama, the most common effects, besides contrasts, are tempests, thunder, moonlight, scenes at sea or by the sea- shore, changes of costume, exposure of the female body,