may record his ecstasy in expounding absurd ideas. I want to know why he believes in these ideas and I want to see if he can make me believe them. If he does not, I cannot satisfy myself with studying his intentions, even when they are in the form of verse or in a novel. I also am concerned with the question whether he is right in accepting these ideas, though I admit his sincerity.
Again I take up a Puritanical poem. I cannot judge the author by merely studying the writer's intentions and contenting myself with the knowledge that he has faithfully and beautifully recorded them. No, I want to know why he is a Puritan; I seek to show the folly of his expression; I must register my protest that I have not been moved by him, that I consider him intellectually and morally deficient.
The great fault of Croce's views, however, is that in looking upon art as expression he takes no interest in the question whether it meets with sympathy. It is true he recognizes that the poet often expresses our own intuitions for us, when he expresses his own. But he is not concerned with the question whether the poet has a right to feel that way and whether he has a sympathetic audience no matter how small. Yet the artist who expresses his intuitions is always bound to have some audience. It is because "every atom that belongs to me as good belongs to you." He is bound to have sympathizers. If Croce had said that the artist should not be concerned because the majority does not agree with him, we could follow him, but only because we think the artist is right and the majority is wrong. But to cast aside the question of sympathy altogether, to refuse to take into consideration the emotions of any readers, is to demoralize art and cast intelligence out of it.
It cannot be repeated then too often that poetry is not
a matter of emotions only, but of intellectual perception and moral outlook as well. The poet who has described a painful episode in his life does not always just merely record the pain, he goes further than his intuition. He thinks and judges and condemns and plans. He is also a philosopher and a moralist, excited to such states by his intuition. It wasn't intuition that created the plays of Shakespeare and Ibsen, it was a moral and intellectual vision working with the poet's intuition. Logic, science, metaphysics, ethics, are part of the poetic material. All ideas are philosophic or scientific, and emotionally and beautifully expressed may become poetry or literature.
However, Croce did good service in calling for the independence of art, since reformers and moralists often seek to force upon art a practical end outside and beside it. He also admits that the practical and aesthetic are often found united, and that it would be erroneous to maintain that the artist's independence of vision should be extended to the communication. "If art be understood as the externalization of art, then utility and morality have a perfect right to deal with it; that is to say, the right one possesses to deal with one's own household." Since the artist selects from his intuitions when he writes, his selection is governed by the economic conditions of life and of its moral direction. Hence Croce finds the artist's use of the concepts of morality to some extent justified.
But where the ideas dealt with by an author are such as all accept, the beauty of the work depends on the manner in which it is written. Here he does not write for the purpose of the underlying idea, which he uses merely as a pretext for artistic work. He seeks to portray an emotion and to make the reader feel it. Drawing a picture may be the object of the author. He may merely try to reproduce with vividness what we all see; or
narrate what we all know. The importance of his work lies then in its technique. There is no question that technique is always to be considered in determining one's greatness as a writer.
What distinguishes the layman from the artist is that the former has no power of craftsmanship; he does not understand the secrets of any of the forms of literature; he does not know how to set down his thoughts or sentiments in a pleasing or beautiful manner. There are many laymen who have better views on morality and who possess a greater intellect than many successful authors, but they are not artists. If by knowing how to tell a story or sing a poem they could move the world,—if they had craftsmanship,—then we would call them artists.
It does not follow, however, that because an author has certain technical genius, but is destitute of any intellect, and dallies with trite ideas, that he is a great artist. To rank among the great artists perfection of form should be welded with great and important ideas of life.