CHAPTER VIII
POETRY RISES ABOVE ART FOR ART'S SAKE AND INTUITION
The first lengthy formulation of the theory of art for art's sake was made, I believe, by Gautier in the preface to his Mademoiselle de Maupin, in 1833. The theory itself had previously also been advanced and put into practice by Keats, and a little later by Poe. Hugo claims to have been the first one to have used the term. He was also one of the most bitter opponents of the idea, as the readers of his Shakespeare will note. The view was supported in France by Baudelaire and Flaubert, and by later schools like the Symbolists. In England Swinburne made an excellent defense of it in his book on William Blake. The poets of "The Nineties" like Wilde and Symons wrote in favor of it. Mention should also be made of an exceedingly good chapter on the Dignity of Technique in R. A. M. Stevenson's Velasquez, and especially Whistler's Ten o'Clock Lecture.
Needless to say, most of these writers had their own conception of what art for art's sake was. They agreed on several phases of it—that the subject matter and ideas of a work of art did not count, that the important thing was the execution, that art was not to be judged by any standard of morality, that it had its own morality, and that it did not matter if from a conventional point of view it was immoral, provided it was well executed. The theory was antagonistic to the introduction of ideas, of humanitarian motives, of tendencies to the portrayal of
life and the analysis of emotions. Its use was certainly an undemocratic phase of art.
In many respects the theory awakens sympathy in all lovers of literature; it was a reaction to the moralist view which wanted art to teach the commonplace ethical notions we all know. Art has always had an enemy in the bourgeois moralist. He always looked for a sermon, and stamped the artist as immoral who arrived at conclusions different from those countenanced by the church or the state. He was not satisfied to read of a wonderful portrayal of a passion, done as a lesson in psychology without any moral comments by the author. He wanted the artist to act like a preacher and condemn at all times, instead of portray. The Puritan opposed the truthful description of natural emotions; he looked askance upon references to the body; he wanted people drawn in obedience to laws, instead of as breaking through them. He tried to thrust subjects upon the artist and limit him. He had no ear for sound, no eye for color, no appreciation of beauty.
Little wonder that the artist lost patience and sent morality to the devil, and deified technique and deliberately chose unseemly subjects. The disciples of art for art's sake did much good to the cause of art. They broadened its field. They gave the artist the right to write about a corpse or delirium tremens, to describe a murder or a crime without pointing out lessons. They permitted him to use his imagination to the full extent, and to invent any forms he chose.
But the theory overrode itself. It became an apology for abuses of art. Writers began to create meaningless jargon, to waste words on trite ideas, to avoid all contact with life, to eliminate man as a subject of art. Art lacked soul, and if it showed a personality behind it, it