Art principles in literature - Francis P. Donnelly

ART PRINCIPLES
IN LITERATURE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

ART PRINCIPLES
IN LITERATURE

By FRANCIS P. DONNELLY, S.J.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MCMXXV

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

REPRINTED JULY, 1928.

WYNKOOP HALLENBECK CRAWFORD COMPANY, NEW YORK, U. S. A.

INTRODUCTION

In the Art of Interesting (Kenedy, 1920) the writer began a discussion of the principles of art and of their application to writing and speaking. In this work the discussion is carried further and is not restricted to the one feature of arousing and fixing attention, especially in oratory, which was the chief topic of the Art of Interesting. The following chapters represent the reactions of the writer to literature both as composed today and as taught in our schools. Any active mind, bewildered by the ceaseless experimenting in literature and education, and not satisfied with a passive acceptance of even excellent critics, is necessarily forced back upon first principles. Such a mind will not yield to the despair of skepticism, that there are no first principles, nor to the despair of agnosticism, that there may be such principles but we cannot know them, nor yet to the despair of pragmatism, that we must wait and see whether the human race ages from now will give us assurance that there really are principles of art because the last man has seen that these principles have been found to work up to the moment prior to which he joined Tutankhamen.

Art, just as morals and pure science, differs entirely from the natural sciences, which are generalizations based upon acquired information and must change as long as the information upon which they are based can be modified and enlarged. But where, as in art or pure science, principles are based on final truths, the principles have also a finality and can only be rejected if their basis can be changed or modified. Aristotle’s principles have something of that finality. Aristotle had for his study a body of literature that has for centuries met with the approval of the best taste in every age and of every critic. Aristotle’s biology or physics are not final, but his ethics, his logic, his esthetics are in measurable distance of finality except where some additions have been made to the materials upon which he based his analysis. In religion, because of revelation, in music because of discoveries in instrumentation, and perhaps in other arts, time has added to the original store, but in literature there are few additions to the fields which lay before Aristotle, and subsequent ages have not developed any keener analytical powers than those of Aristotle.

It is Aristotle’s principles that in the main have dominated the writer’s reactions to modern art and literature. When Greek literature held an honored place in our schools, there was less need of insisting on obvious truths of art. The intense modernism now predominating everywhere has driven classical literature and classical methods from school and life. History is modernized too or fails to supply the vital contact with the ever-living past which earlier schools experienced in the poets, historians, orators and philosophers of Greece and Rome. So-called cultural subjects in modern education are chiefly informational. Culture is a word which calls for definition, but on its intellectual side at least, culture for the largest number of persons in the world can be gauged most satisfactorily by their appreciation of literature and by their capacity to produce literature. The study of literature as an art is the chief topic of this book, and Aristotle’s great principles need all the more stressing now that his philosophy of art and the supreme literature on which he based his conclusions are passing away from present-day consciousness.

The chapters that follow are popular rather than scientific in presentation. Readers who seek a fuller and wider view may be interested in such a work as Benedetto Croce’s Æsthetic, from the Italian by Douglas Ainslie. Its historical summary, especially for modern times, is valuable and good. For the Greeks and earlier periods, Butcher’s Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts is easily best. Professor Rhys Roberts’ editions of the works of Dionysius, Longinus and Demetrius are excellent for the traditions of classical rhetoric, a tradition weak in America.

In theory Croce is an extreme intellectualist in the principles of art. He locates all of esthetics in pure intuition, which is “lyrical,” that is, emotional, because it represents “the states of the soul,” “passionality, feeling, personality.” For Croce “natural beauty is simply a stimulus to esthetic reproduction, which presupposes previous production.” He is therefore an idealist in his conception of beauty. Even monuments of art seem to be only “stimulants to esthetic reproduction” and are not beautiful in themselves. In another place, however, Croce seems to be a realist. “Art is governed entirely by imagination; its only riches are images. Art does not classify objects nor pronounce them real or imaginary nor qualify them nor define them. Art feels and represents them. In as far as it apprehends ‘the real’ immediately before it is modified and made clear by the concept, it must be called pure intuition.”

Quite to the other extreme in theory goes The Psychology of Beauty by Ethel D. Puffer. This author has much about sensations and their physiology and but little about ideas. For Croce the last stage is in the idea; for Puffer it would seem to be in the work of art. “The low-lying wide expanse of some of the old Dutch landscapists give us repose, not because they remind us of the peaceful happiness of the land but because we cannot melt ourselves into all those horizontal lines without the restful feeling which accompanies such relaxation.” This passage might almost class the writer with the Einfühlung school,—the school which gives Ruskin’s “pathetic fallacy” a number of advocates. Pathetic fallacy was a complete misnomer when applied by Ruskin to the well-known tropes of metaphor and personification. Kingsley was not insane enough to imagine that a wave was actually cruel and actually crawled. He likened the wave that drowned to a wild animal. But the school of Lipps in Germany desires you to moan with the wind and smile with the rose and lie flat with painted horizontal lines.

Perhaps Puffer’s formula of stimulation with repose and Croce’s formula of intuition with lyricism can be reconciled with Aquinas’ definition of the beautiful, quæ visa placent. A study of Maurice De Wulf’s excellent little volume L’Œuvre d’Art et la Beauté gives us briefly and clearly the neo-scholastic solution of the esthetic problem. The book is a good example of the reasonable discussion which has won for scholastic philosophy the universal designation as the philosophy of common sense. Longhaye’s Théorie des Belles Lettres, which is scholastic philosophy applied to literature, is another clear and sane presentation of the principles of the art.

The reader who desires to supplement the popular exposition of this book with a systematic treatise on the esthetic and its application to literature is recommended to De Wulf and to Longhaye. English is rich in criticism but is deficient in works treating of the philosophy of beauty in literature.

	PAGE
[INTRODUCTION]
Connection with author’s Art of Interesting—Need of principles of an art amidst violent experimentation in art and education—Aristotle’s principles valid except where the basis of his deductions has been modified—With Greek literature leaving our schools, Greek taste is needed against excessive modernism—Recent art discussions— Croce’s Æsthetic; Puffer’s Psychology of Beauty; De Wulf’s L’Œuvre d’Art et la Beauté	[v]
ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE
[PART FIRST] ART IN THE APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE
I ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL
1. Individualism and Responsibility	[1]
Talking to oneself in art—Chaos in religion, morals and art from unchecked individualism—Altruism a better principle—Responsibility inevitable—Responsibility a help, no hindrance to the artist—Greek drama; Italian Madonnas; Horace.
II ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL
2. Vagaries of Individualism	[8]
Modern literature and art and a sense of humor—Fiction, biographical and pathological—New poetry shallow—Riot of emotionalism—Novel of satire, European continental type originating in low comedy—Novel of Scott, epic in origin—Nature, experience, wisdom, the remedies of individualism.
III ART AND HUMAN NATURE
1. The Universal Element	[14]
Art movements begin in nature—Art is social—Permanence of literature due to universal appeal—The camera and the canvas—Personality and individuality—Shock of nerves not the mental thrill of art.
IV ART AND HUMAN NATURE
2. Realism and Reality	[20]
Real cake of soap on a painted wave—Art a distinct world from reality—Motivation, not through logical discussion but through probable incident—Painting in the cake of soap—Realism depressing because of cynic moralizing—Evil in Shakespeare and Homer, relieved by pathos and humor, not depressing.
V ART AND THE DIVINE
1. Religious Origin of Art	[26]
Rich tombs of the past testify to belief in immortality—Cro-Magnon cave pictures probably religious—Earliest art of all nations due to religion—Dancing, song, music, sculpture, architecture, drama, epic—Gothic cathedral of religious middle-ages, synthesis of all arts.
VI ART AND THE DIVINE
2. The Kinship of Art and Religion	[31]
Hebraism, Puritanism, Islamism, reacting against art and the result—Explanation of the origin of art—Taine’s environment theory—Spencer’s play theory—Theory of fear and magic spells—Adequate explanation found in man’s intellectual nature—Art like religion intellectual—Art and religion idealistic—Personal and emotional—Art and religion social in appeal—Sublimity of art and the revelation of Genesis—Harmonious equation between soul and the truth of reality, between soul and the good of morality, same as equation between soul and beauty, all founded on the fact that both soul and triple reality are images of God.
VII ART AND THE DIVINE
3. Art in Its Relation to Virtue	[39]
The theomorphism of man in the threefold tendency of science, morality and art—Religion, a virtue; art, a function of perceptions—Ruskin’s school of the religion of beauty—Moralizing not a function of art—Estheticism neither asceticism nor sensualism—Evil in art to be represented as evil—Evil to be a rationalized element—Contemporary evil excites feelings of reality—Art and religion ennobling—Art and religion purifying—Creation and disinterestedness most divine elements in art.
VIII THE VISCERAL TEST OF BEAUTY
The critic’s equipment—Defective philosophy of some modern critics, Mencken, Murry, Cohen—Ugly in art and its subdual—Esthetic feeling not concupiscence—Disinterestedness of beauty excludes sensuality of appetites—Visceral reactions not from beauty	[48]
[PART SECOND] ART IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE
IX LOOKING FORWARD IN LITERATURE
Literature taught for use in Greece, Rome, and elsewhere—Science and history always changing; literature lasting—Object of literature in university—True humanism, equipping man’s faculties with art—Every school subject teaches its like—Correlations of literature and creation—Contemporary literature not suitable—Scientific study partly; artistic study is wholly satisfying	[57]
X UNIFYING EDUCATION THROUGH LITERATURE
Necessity of unity—In university through profession—No unity in college electivism—Unity impaired by departments and by specializing—Unity in France, Germany and England—Departmental system destroying the art appeal of literature—Science through knowing; art through doing—Recent mental tests accentuate expression and language—General education through art of literature	[64]
XI THE INTERESTING TEACHER OF LITERATURE
Spread of science—System and eliminating of personality—Dissertations for the doctorate—Scholarly means encyclopedic—The impersonal lecturer—Justin McCarthy’s teacher and his methods—Not scientific specialization, but exercise of mental powers—Formulas and personality—Another interesting teacher—Literature educates equally with science—The ideal	[70]
XII EDUCATING THE EMOTIONS
Life full of emotions—Emotions intense in our crowded civilization—Morale, organized emotion—Emotions neglected in education—Education of facts dominating schools—Twofold nature of emotions—Emotions from concrete imagining—Kindled by contact—Literature embodiment of emotions—Emotions developed by self-expression and controlled by exercise	[83]
XIII KEEP THE CLASSICS BUT TEACH THEM
Classics to be kept but taught differently—Former help of translation—Literature overwhelmed by erudition—Germany, France, England, America—True use of erudition—Natural sciences change; art endures—Reproduction, the soul of literary teaching—Method of training—Modern literatures not yet able to supplant ancient literatures	[91]
XIV THE VITALIZER OF THE WORLD
Literary renaissances associated with Greek literature—Revivals through Irish monks—Spain, France, Scholasticism—Germany with Wolf, Winckelmann, Lessing—England under Queen Anne and Queen Victoria—Youth of civilization in Greece	[100]
XV TRUE PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC CRITICISM
Story of Phidias’ statue and Homer—Homer tested by art—Flaws in material—Absorption in immediate effects—Told story different from story read—Outline of a study on a broad scale—Variety, alternation, growth in Homeric battling—Homeric palace, the place of Homer’s recital	[106]
XVI THE CHILD-TEST OF LITERATURE
Child-test in religion and morals, in the Bible—Homer’s mother and child—Hector and Andromache—Child in later literature rare—Latin writers—Conventionality instead of Homeric naturalness	[114]
XVII THE CHRIST-CHILD TEST OF LITERATURE
Christ-Child in art—Christmas and the drama—In Ireland—Medieval and Renaissance writers—Milton’s war-like child—Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Longfellow—Return of naturalness in Stevenson, Carroll and others—Faith and its effects in Thompson and Tabb	[119]
[APPENDIX]
GREEK SPEAKS FOR ITSELF
Mosaic of etymology—Ecclesiastical sphere—Diet, posies and programs—Geography, zoology, politics—Pharmacies and surgery—Schools and composition—Apology and epitaph	[129]
NOTE: THE NATURE OF ESTHETIC ENJOYMENT
Ownership not of the essence of beauty as of good—Perception sufficient for the enjoyment of the beautiful—No new faculty required—Pleasure is normal life consciously localized—Esthetic Enjoyment in the simple apprehension, not in judgment or inference as such—Fact not of the essence of esthetic enjoyment, which is had in fiction too—Causa Exemplaris—Imagination, source of originality—Aristotle’s principles: creation, motivation, unity, universality	[134]
A FORWARD-LOOKING LESSON IN LITERATURE	[159]

INTRODUCTION

CONTENTS