Art principles in literature

by Francis P. Donnelly

NOTE: THE NATURE OF ESTHETIC ENJOYMENT

Esthetic pleasure or the enjoyment of the beautiful is generally admitted to be disinterested. Possession and ownership do not enter into the esthetic act. The ownership of Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is not an object of indifference or of disinterested attention. Thieves scheme for the ownership, thousands covet it, guards protect it. But the enjoyment of “Mona Lisa” is not selfish and exclusive in its nature. Esthetic enjoyment makes abstraction of possession and of selfish good. It follows therefore that esthetic enjoyment is a function of man’s knowledge, not of man’s desires and appetites. The only condition upon which the appetites, whether bodily or spiritual, can operate is that they be energized by personal good. Volition may be free, but it cannot be disinterested. You may enjoy another’s picture; you cannot eat his dinner, nor can you be indifferent to what you know to be for your good.

Some have asserted that esthetic enjoyment belongs to a special power apart from both knowledge and appetite. There is however no need of such power. Certainly beauty must be known to be enjoyed, but is not the knowledge itself adequate to produce the characteristic effect of beauty? Is not Aquinas right in saying, “Pulchrum dicitur id cujus ipsa apprehensio placet” (that is called beautiful which simply by its perception pleases)? Good, being an end, cannot delight solely by being perceived; good must be attained. But for beauty, is not its very perception an enjoyment? The solution of this question will be found in the nature of enjoyment.

Emotions and feelings, pleasure and pain are easy to understand and for that reason difficult to express in satisfactory formulas. By its very nature every faculty of man operating normally has an accompanying pleasure, while if operating abnormally it has pain. The faculty itself is therefore the subject of the feeling just as life is inherent in the organism. Indeed feeling is consciously localized life. The feeling of the toe is felt by the toe; the joy of seeing is felt by the eye. No distinct power is required to carry the feeling. So it is with esthetic emotions. The mind itself feels the delight of beauty. Esthetic enjoyment is a function of perception.

Does esthetic enjoyment belong to the senses and to the imagination? Here again there is difference of opinion. It is probable, however, that sensible perception has no accompanying esthetic pleasure. St. Augustine appealed to experience and declared that esthetic enjoyment of the beauty, say, of the sun, was possible, even when the sight suffered pain. A better reason may be found in the behavior of animals which, though clothed in beauty, give us no certain evidence of esthetic appreciation and enjoyment.

Esthetic enjoyment therefore belongs to intellectual cognition. Now the intellect has many operations. Which one of these carries the esthetic pleasure or esthetic pain, which one is charged with the vital thrill that creates and appreciates the world of art? The mind reasons, the mind judges, the mind apprehends. Esthetic enjoyment belongs to the last. Judgments and inferences may be objects of esthetic enjoyment; to reason, to judge may precede or follow or may be even necessary conditions, but the esthetic act is most probably one of simple apprehension. There would seem to be general agreement that contemplation is the characteristic attitude of the mind in the presence of beauty. Aquinas excludes distinctly the idea of end from beauty. Beauty is a form which we contemplate. Croce calls the esthetic perception intuition. Theodore Watts-Dunton seems to be describing the same act when he calls poetry “the renascence of wonder.” The efforts of reasoning and of judging appear to be alien to the mental attitude in the presence of beauty.

The simple apprehension is concerned with what is termed ontological truth, whereas reasoning and judging result in logical truth. Now, just as esthetic enjoyment abstracts from possession or good, so does it abstract from the affirmations belonging to the logical truth of judgment and of rational inference. There is esthetic enjoyment of fiction as well as of fact. Aristotle long ago saw that although the substance of art must be the persons, actions and feelings of man, the pleasure found in the work of art does not arise from its correspondence with reality. The correspondence with reality gives the satisfaction of logical truth, of scientific truth, of historical fact. The truth which is the object of esthetic pleasure in art is the truth of consistency, of realization of ideal, the truth of reasonable congruity, of plot in a wide sense of the term. This vision, this dream of the artist, scholastic philosophers call causa exemplaris or ideal. If we are right in our understanding of Croce, his intuition is nothing else but the simple apprehension of the ideal. Esthetic enjoyment comes also, as is clear, from the simple apprehension of beauty in natural realities where there is no fiction of art.

To localize the esthetic enjoyment in this way does not determine the constituent elements of beauty, but clear definitions help to exclude many false notions of beauty. The ideal of the artist is embodied in his imagination before it is expressed in its proper medium. The art of man always must have a medium which can be perceived by the senses. That is why a vigorous imagination, which stores up and dispenses to its owner quickly and abundantly of its riches, is so useful to the artist. Through his imagination the artist is original and personal. The pure thought of science is abstract and alike in all minds; the artistic vision formed from individual experience will be different in every one. Therefore no two artists expressing themselves in the concrete can be alike as no two scenes of nature are alike in beauty.

Aristotle put the pleasure of art in perception. Art for him is a mimesis, which does not mean an imitation, in the sense of mirroring or copying. That was Plato’s notion, which Aristotle combated. Art is, in Aristotle, a power analogous to nature, working like nature in another and limited world, of sound, of color, of human thoughts. Art is fiction, a dramatizing, a staging of life, to be judged, not by correspondence with fact, but by its own plausible and convincing rationalization. No one has done more for art than Aristotle in his insistence upon the necessity of cause and effect, of a motivation, sufficient at least for the artist’s public. Intrinsic unity, the fruit of perfect motivation, was another necessary requisite in Aristotle’s analysis of art. It is only when the varied elements of the artist’s imaginative experience have fused themselves into a unity by having a well-motivated beginning, middle and end that the mind feels the beauty of its vision.

Universality in art is another fruitful idea of Aristotle. While confined to his sensible medium, the artist must link up the separate elements of his vision more closely than in the realm of fact. He will by that very reason be general and universal because his motivation must approve itself to all. A moving picture of the death of Cæsar as it really occurred would be valuable history. It would, however, be individual. Shakespeare’s death of Cæsar has a beginning, middle and end, and the spectators see in it the working out of a plot in which every word and act has been carefully planned and fitted into the design. The individuating notes are left out, and the death of a Cæsar has universal appeal.

Artistic creation, motivation, unity, universality, these are great principles of art formulated by Aristotle and not likely ever to be superseded. The cognitive idea of beauty and those principles of Aristotle have been followed in the chapters of this book.

For further discussion of the nature of esthetic pleasure, see author’s “Art of Interesting,” Chap. V, Interest from Emotions; Chap. XVII, Is Esthetic Emotion a Spinal Thrill?

A FORWARD-LOOKING LESSON IN LITERATURE
(To exemplify [Chapter IX])

THE METHOD

THE dry bones in the cold print of this lesson are to be galvanized into life by a teacher in constant touch with the class and enlisting the coöperation by questions, by having the passage read aloud, by writing on the board, by interchanges of ideas, by lively disputes between individuals. No mere lecture with passive listeners, no mere study period with a passive overseer, but real teaching, which is a fine conversation, directed upon select subjects and carried to a destined end under expert guidance.

All of the technical terms, apprehension, judgment, inference and the rest are to be omitted. The intelligent use of such terms belongs to college, although the operations and objects which the terms designate belong to all grades. Through simple, untechnical questions the whole truth may be understood by each, and every student may be made to go through operations which are of daily occurrence and which the student must make habitual by repeated exercise to insure a mastery of the art of expression. The teacher is an expert mental director, and, setting before the class a good passage of literature, he will make them think again and put in order again and express again what the author has done; he will make them conceive, arrange and express thoughts of their own with the excellence which teacher and class have noted and appreciated in the passage. The teacher of literature will be no lecturer in history or in philosophy or in mathematics, but will be like the teacher of music or like the physical trainer, who makes his class go through exercises which he himself has exemplified and which the class immediately practice to acquire bodily skill then and for the future.

A passage of poetry is designedly taken in this lesson to show how poetry can be made to contribute to the art of expression. Literature for some is history, for others philosophy. These center attention on the facts or ideas. Literature for others is a dreamy, mysterious thing, which you must look at with awe, speak about with esoteric rhapsody and carefully lock up again in a glass case. A forward looking lesson in literature must know what the passage means, but is usually not concerned with the origin and past history of the author’s meaning. The forward-looking lesson will not pretend to solve all the mysteries of art and beauty but will take out of the clouds and put clearly before the class some point in the art of expression, a point which will be practical and of everyday use. Such a lesson will be as decidedly vocational as hammering a nail or rigging up a radio set or rushing around a gymnasium.

The purpose ever before the literature teacher’s mind is appreciation, leading to mental action and through repeated action to the art of expression.

THE LESSON

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

I. ANALYSIS OF THOUGHT

1. Understanding.—The meaning of each word, the meaning of each line, the meaning of the whole stanza. This should not be a mere passive understanding. Students should be made to reëxpress the ideas, not only by paraphrase in other words but especially by imaginative realization. “For instance,” “Just like what?” are two phrases to be often on the teacher’s lips. “Have you a heard a curfew?” “Have you heard a knell tolling?” “Did you ever see in picture or in reality a lowing herd winding o’er the lea?” A thought illustrated by the thinker’s imagination is realized fully, is felt as well as grasped, and will persist.

2. Judgment.—What is the logical subject and logical predicate of each line and of the whole stanza? That is, what is the author’s chief topic and what does he say about it? This need not always be the grammatical subject of the passage. The art of expression is not only apprehending by vivid understanding, but it is also judging by predication, by affirming or denying something of the subject. There is not a class of any grade which cannot profitably exercise itself in clear and concise judgements. The successive judgements briefly put are: The bell tells the end of day: the cows return to the barn: the ploughman comes home: I am left alone in the darkness.

3. Reasoning.—As as single sentence may be analyzed into a definite subject and a definite predicate for a judgment, so two or more sentences may be compared to grasp the relation between them. Poetry does not go through a process of reasoning. It states thoughts and presents pictures, permitting the mind to infer. The three pictures in the opening lines have a common trait which the mind detects: all three pictures are signs of nightfall. The mind draws an inference which is inductive in nature, and the whole stanza may be briefly stated: The coming of night leaves me alone in darkness.

These stages in analyzing the thought are elaborated here. In practice they may be expedited. Before being read, the judgment and inference may be presented as problems for solution: What does the writer say in each line? What one idea is found in the first three lines? What will be the title, the head-line, the summary of each line and of the whole stanza?[5]

II. ANALYSIS OF FORM

Form includes not only the words and sentences, their choice and their arrangement, but also the texture and color of the thoughts and their modification ending in their perfect expression, as contrasted with the bare and limited statements already determined. In the study of literature, words are not merely materials for philologizing, or merely sentences, free opportunities for grammatical anatomizing with all the bones properly numbered and labeled. Such analyses look chiefly backward and are not productive of writers. Language anatomy has its great utility, but literature, or the art of expression, must look to the flesh and blood of the thoughts, to the personality, to the imagination, to the concrete embodiment of the writer’s art. The student will take up, therefore, the thought already analyzed and note and appreciate how his author has clothed the ideas, the judgments, the reasoning. He will reënact the creative process the author went through, and so here, with a view to expression, he will strive to rival the excellence of Gray, but will do so with his own thoughts.

Grading.—At this stage the teacher may point out incidentally many excellences in the art of expression, but will drill and have practice on the particular excellence in expression, proper to his class. The textbook ordinarily determines the grade, but if there is no textbook or prescribed program, the teacher will determine his own order of matter.

Right Word.—Let us suppose the teacher is teaching the art of using the right word (Model English, 3), the word which states the thing exactly in kind. He may center attention on the line:

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.

The class will be drilled in the author’s choice of the right word by considering other possible but less exact combinations, e.g.: A number of noisy cows went reluctantly along. After this drill, the class will appreciate what the right word is and be ready for the expression of their own ideas in right words. They are not to paraphrase Gray’s meaning. That has already been done, but they are to provide subject-matter of their own and express it with a like excellence. Did they continue to speak of cows, they could not better Gray, but if they speak of bees or bloodhounds or cavalry or autumn leaves or rioters or anything else that has come under their experience in life or in reading, they might approach the exactness of Gray in giving the right word for the sound, for the collection, for the action, for the manner and for the place.

Bees: the buzzing swarm of bees circled thickly about the hive.

Bloodhounds: the baying pack of hounds followed the trail eagerly.

Cavalry: the clattering squadron of cavalry galloped swiftly along the road.

Autumn: the heaps of rustling leaves were swept into every corner by autumn winds.

Rioters: the yelling mob of rioters rushed wildly towards the jail.

Imagination.—Suppose the teacher is giving a lesson in imagination (“Model English,” Chap. X). If one of the General Methods, say Reflecting (No. 69), is to be taught, then the class must vividly picture in their imaginations Gray’s stanza. With the help of books on the desk and with a gesture or two the scene and all its characters may be dramatized. All this suggestively rather than with exact mimicry, unless there is in question a passage that may be reproduced by the class in a miniature pageant or play. To test whether the class is actually imagining, have them quickly number, one after another, the things they see and hear directly by the words and indirectly suggested by the words. Or test in another way. Let each draw an outline of the frame of a picture and show how they would illustrate any line or the whole stanza, putting numbers on the blank space to locate the details and explaining to the side what the numbers stand for.

Suppose a particular method, significant part for the whole (No. 73) be the matter of the lesson, then the whole which is expressed by Gray is “evening,” or “parting day,” pictured by three significant details—curfew, cows and ploughman. Have the class take an opposite situation—not evening in a graveyard in preparation for gloomy thoughts, but morning on the farm looking to a busy, joyous day. Or again, what significant details will suggest the hush of evening in a city or on the sea; noon in a factory, closing of school in the afternoon, coming of winter in December, dawning of spring in April, etc. Interest may be accentuated if one student gives the details and others imagine what is the whole suggested. For example: The cock crows a greeting to the rising sun; the team of horses is hitched to the mowing machine, and soon the clicking knives lay low the waving grass (farm); the crank is whirled about with a swift revolution and jerking stop; the low purr of a hidden engine steals upon the ear and a cloud of dust swallows up the rattling car (a Ford); a sprig of shamrock graces the lapel of the coat; green ribbons flaunt gayly above ruddy cheeks, and down the street steps a band jigging Garryowen (St. Patrick’s Day). In the same way elements of force or interest, metrical charm or poetic thought and many other points could be taught from this stanza, according to the grade of the class before the teacher. Whatever the passage taken, once the grade has been settled, the artistic drill should be carried through the stages of grasping the thought definitely, of appreciating it with discrimination, of repeating the process of creation, of dramatizing the complete product, and finally of self-expression on the part of the student, striving to rival the author in the excellence he has studied.