CHAPTER XVIII[ToC]
SEXUAL LIFE IN ART
The Genesis of Art.—Art represents in a harmonious form the movements of our sentimental life. The phylogeny of art is still very obscure; Darwin attributes it to sexual attraction, through the efforts made by one sex to attract the other; but his arguments have never convinced me.[15]
Aristotle recognized in art the principles of representation of the beautiful and of imitation. Karl Groos, of Giessen, refutes Darwin's hypothesis, and upholds the principle of the representation of self by sensations which relate to the subject, thus giving a tangible object to corresponding internal emotions (among animals, for example, the pleasure of hearing their own voice).[16]
The motor instinct and the movements executed in play seem to be among the most primitive autonomous creators of art. Similar play is observed in ants. In man, Groos attributes a considerable role to religious ecstasy and ecstasy in general, in the genesis of art. "Since its object is to excite the sentiments, it is obvious that art utilizes from the first the domain which is richest in emotional sensations, that is the sexual domain." He shows at the same time that erotic subjects have a much more general and definite importance in highly developed art than in what we know of primitive art.
Groos is certainly right, for primitive eroticism was too coarse and sensual, too exclusively tactile to affect the mind as deeply and with such gradations of symphony as is the case with civilized man. This reason alone seems to me sufficient to support Groos' view, which is also confirmed by the fact that primitive works of art contain very few erotic subjects.
The more delicate art becomes the better it acts. The intensity of its action depends, however, more especially on the power with which it moves our feelings. Art requires discord, not only in music, but elsewhere, in order to act more strongly on the human emotions by the effect of contrast. In describing the ugly it awakens desire for the beautiful. Art should be spontaneous and exuberant with the truth of conviction; it should be free from mannerism and all dogmatism, intellectual or moral. The positive æsthetic sentiment, or sentiment of beauty is very relative, and depends essentially on the phylogenetic adaptation of the human sentiments, as well as on individual habits and popular customs. The odor of manure is no doubt pleasant to a farm laborer, but it is unpleasant to us. The male invert finds man more beautiful than woman. A savage or a peasant regards as beautiful what a cultured man considers ugly. The music of Wagner or Chopin is tiresome to a person with no musical education or ear, while a melomaniac goes into raptures over it.
Erotic Art.—It is quite natural that the chord whose vibrations influence the most powerful human emotion—sexual love—has an infinite variety of vibrations in all forms of art. Music gives expression to the sexual sensations and their psychic irradiations by tones representing desire, passion, joy, sadness, deception, despair, sacrifice, ecstasy, etc.