Therein, by the way, is suggested the criterion of greatness that is contained in the doctrine that art is for life’s sake. The theory of art for art’s sake left its holders at a loss before the question “Is no man greater than another, if his works are beautiful, if he is an equally skilful artist?” They knew that he was, but their theory could not tell them why, and they had to take refuge in cynicism. The theory of art for “morality’s” sake was no more satisfying. It suggested that the greatest artist was he who preached the most good, and so left its holders in speechless difficulty before a comparison of Rossetti and Dr. Watts. The theory of art for life’s sake has a clear answer, and offers a valid test. That man is the greatest artist who makes us the most profoundly conscious of life. Shakespeare is set above Herrick, who was a better technician, and Leonardo above Murillo, who painted more devotional subjects, on grounds with which men, neither as artists nor as moralists, need quarrel.
Art for Art’s sake was a battle-cry, and, to understand it, we had to understand what those who used it fought. Art for Life’s sake is also a battle-cry, though it includes in those four words a suggestion not only of the function of art but of its nature. Let us review the enemies we attack with those words upon our lips. What do we fight against? What are the misunderstandings which in our time encourage the production of false, of secondary art, and obscure the excellence of the finest?
We fight first against a political valuation of art, that imagines poetry, pictures and music as auxiliaries in the reconstruction or conservation of the state, and judges them by their efficiency as political pamphlets.
We fight secondly against an educational valuation of art, that judges works of art by the accuracy of the facts they happen to embody, the accuracy of the pictures they paint of this or that form of life, the clearness with which they illustrate generalisations.
We fight thirdly against the valuation of art by its technical skill, by the beauty that is a universal condition of its being. These things cannot afford a scale of comparison for works of art, but only a guarantee that they are worthy of judgment. We should not fight against this valuation if it showed itself in practice capable of so useful an office. It is, however, not sufficiently selective, but allows itself to be tricked by things built in imitation of perfect building, things whose form is not identical with their content, things which manifest more skill than vitality. This, our old ally, since it made our battle possible, is now our subtlest enemy.
Our battle is far from being easy, for we fight not to kill but to make captive, and it is easier and safer to fight to kill. We fight not to destroy those valuations, but to destroy their pre-eminence. Recognising (1) that a work of art has a political, comparable to its moral, influence, (2) that it always embodies knowledge, (3) that it is nothing if it does not wake in us the feeling that we are near the achievement of the beautiful, we wish to deny none of these facts, but to prevent any one of them from being taken as the foundation of a criterion of art. We wish to set over them a criterion of art that shall include them all. Above technique, above opinion, above information, we set life, of the special kind that is here described, whose conscious vitality is to unconscious vitality what living is to existence.
What, then, do we ask ourselves after experiencing a work of art.
We ask one thing only, though, perhaps, in many forms: Has it given us an increased consciousness of life, or has it merely had in view one or other of those valuations whose supreme authority we reject? Is its title to the name of art merely that it is an illustration of a doctrine that has elbowed out the doctrine it illustrates, merely that it gives us a clear idea how some people live, merely that it has a skin-deep appearance of unity? Or is it a piece of conscious life, separated watchfully from the flux of living, a piece of knowing carried out by the artist, which we are allowed to share? Does it give us a new possession by making us aware of something we possess. We do not ask an artist for opinions, for facts, for skill, alone. We have the right to ask for more. We ask him for ourselves; we ask him for life. “Poetry enriches the blood of the world” by the practice it affords of living consciously. Vain learning, opinion, skill, impoverish it. We ask from an artist opportunities of conscious living, which, taken as they come, multiply the possibilities of their recurrence, turn us into artists, and help us to contract the habit of being alive.
1912.