Delsarte System of Oratory

by Delaumosne

"The Beautiful is the transparency of the aptitudes of the agent, and it radiates from the faculties which govern it. It is order which results from the dynamical disposition of forms."

"Beauty is the reason which presides at the creation of things; it is the invisible power which draws us and subjugates us in them."

"The Beautiful comprises three characters, which we distinguish under the following titles: Ideal, moral and plastic beauty."

By the enunciation of these three categories, Delsarte enters upon the positive aspect of his system. As the result of the careful examination of the aptitudes or faculties of the Ego, approachable by analysis and applied to æsthetics, he has established this first class of manifestations (ideal beauty) as requisite to art. This must result from a combination of the faculties; the possibilities of combination being infinite, but always in subjection to the human being. The artist, according to this personal power of inspiration, should be able to portray a totality of superior and harmonious qualities, such as will oblige any competent observer to recognize it as beautiful. We have taken a step into the realm of the Ideal; that is to say, we have touched that which, without departing from the law, surpasses conventional rule and the natural types accepted for the Beautiful.

Before following the Ideal into its ethereal region, we will further consider the nature of its foundation, which is a combination of the three mother faculties which Delsarte declares to be, in æsthetics, the criterion of the law and the foundation of the science. We already recognize these as the physical, mental and moral aspects of the human being.

The plastic art allies itself particularly to the physical constitution, but the physique cannot be perfectly beautiful unless it manifests intellectual and moral faculties.

Moral and intellectual beauty reveal themselves in the human being under the empire of passion and of sentiment, and the physique is momentarily transformed. The artist should seize beauty at this moment of fullest perfection, above the normal conditions of human existence and perhaps beyond possible plastic beauty.

Behold what glorious possibility for the direction of the artist's aspirations toward the Beautiful! But even this happy chance by no means includes all of the possible conceptions of the Ideal, and neither does it furnish us any absolute idea or definition. This vision of beauty, made ideal by exaltation of the intelligence and the emotion, can only be perceived by the artist of practiced observation and of that intuitive perception which is the gift of nature.

Again considered, the Ideal, being relative as well as the Beautiful, of which it is the exuberance, we must remember that the word is far from corresponding to an idea of absolute beauty. Thus the Ideal of an ordinary taste is not so high as that of a person whose standard of beauty is superior, and the two will be very distant from the image conceived by the pen, the chisel or the brush of a great artist. In many cases the Ideal is nothing but a searching for the intention of nature, obliterated by the circumstances and accidents of life. Then the task of the artist should be to reëstablish the type in his logic--a vulgar face may be portrayed by a skilful brush--and, while preserving its features, there may be put into it the culture of intellect and noble sentiments.

An artist, for instance, will see in a woman, whom time has tried, certain elements of beauty which enable him to portray her nearly as she was at the age of twenty years. He should be able to divine in the young girl, according to the normal development of her features, her appearance at the complete unfolding of her beauty. Yes; in these different cases the artist shall have idealized, since he shall have comprehended, penetrated, interpreted and rectified nature. Still, he may not yet have attained to the comprehension of perfect beauty, such, at least, as human emotion and intellect can conceive, and such as we love to imagine as inhabiting the superior spheres of the universe of which we know nothing further than the dictate of our reason, namely, that they are inhabited by beings more or less like ourselves.