Perhaps Puffer’s formula of stimulation with repose and Croce’s formula of intuition with lyricism can be reconciled with Aquinas’ definition of the beautiful, quæ visa placent. A study of Maurice De Wulf’s excellent little volume L’Œuvre d’Art et la Beauté gives us briefly and clearly the neo-scholastic solution of the esthetic problem. The book is a good example of the reasonable discussion which has won for scholastic philosophy the universal designation as the philosophy of common sense. Longhaye’s Théorie des Belles Lettres, which is scholastic philosophy applied to literature, is another clear and sane presentation of the principles of the art.
The reader who desires to supplement the popular exposition of this book with a systematic treatise on the esthetic and its application to literature is recommended to De Wulf and to Longhaye. English is rich in criticism but is deficient in works treating of the philosophy of beauty in literature.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| [INTRODUCTION] | |
| Connection with author’s Art of Interesting—Need of principles of an art amidst violent experimentation in art and education—Aristotle’s principles valid except where the basis of his deductions has been modified—With Greek literature leaving our schools, Greek taste is needed against excessive modernism—Recent art discussions— Croce’s Æsthetic; Puffer’s Psychology of Beauty; De Wulf’s L’Œuvre d’Art et la Beauté | [v] |
| ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE | |
| [PART FIRST] ART IN THE APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE | |
| I ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL | |
| 1. Individualism and Responsibility | [1] |
| Talking to oneself in art—Chaos in religion, morals and art from unchecked individualism—Altruism a better principle—Responsibility inevitable—Responsibility a help, no hindrance to the artist—Greek drama; Italian Madonnas; Horace. | |
| II ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL | |
| 2. Vagaries of Individualism | [8] |
| Modern literature and art and a sense of humor—Fiction, biographical and pathological—New poetry shallow—Riot of emotionalism—Novel of satire, European continental type originating in low comedy—Novel of Scott, epic in origin—Nature, experience, wisdom, the remedies of individualism. | |
| III ART AND HUMAN NATURE | |
| 1. The Universal Element | [14] |
| Art movements begin in nature—Art is social—Permanence of literature due to universal appeal—The camera and the canvas—Personality and individuality—Shock of nerves not the mental thrill of art. | |
| IV ART AND HUMAN NATURE | |
| 2. Realism and Reality | [20] |
| Real cake of soap on a painted wave—Art a distinct world from reality—Motivation, not through logical discussion but through probable incident—Painting in the cake of soap—Realism depressing because of cynic moralizing—Evil in Shakespeare and Homer, relieved by pathos and humor, not depressing. | |
| V ART AND THE DIVINE | |
| 1. Religious Origin of Art | [26] |
| Rich tombs of the past testify to belief in immortality—Cro-Magnon cave pictures probably religious—Earliest art of all nations due to religion—Dancing, song, music, sculpture, architecture, drama, epic—Gothic cathedral of religious middle-ages, synthesis of all arts. | |
| VI ART AND THE DIVINE | |
| 2. The Kinship of Art and Religion | [31] |
| Hebraism, Puritanism, Islamism, reacting against art and the result—Explanation of the origin of art—Taine’s environment theory—Spencer’s play theory—Theory of fear and magic spells—Adequate explanation found in man’s intellectual nature—Art like religion intellectual—Art and religion idealistic—Personal and emotional—Art and religion social in appeal—Sublimity of art and the revelation of Genesis—Harmonious equation between soul and the truth of reality, between soul and the good of morality, same as equation between soul and beauty, all founded on the fact that both soul and triple reality are images of God. | |
| VII ART AND THE DIVINE | |
| 3. Art in Its Relation to Virtue | [39] |
| The theomorphism of man in the threefold tendency of science, morality and art—Religion, a virtue; art, a function of perceptions—Ruskin’s school of the religion of beauty—Moralizing not a function of art—Estheticism neither asceticism nor sensualism—Evil in art to be represented as evil—Evil to be a rationalized element—Contemporary evil excites feelings of reality—Art and religion ennobling—Art and religion purifying—Creation and disinterestedness most divine elements in art. | |
| VIII THE VISCERAL TEST OF BEAUTY | |
| The critic’s equipment—Defective philosophy of some modern critics, Mencken, Murry, Cohen—Ugly in art and its subdual—Esthetic feeling not concupiscence—Disinterestedness of beauty excludes sensuality of appetites—Visceral reactions not from beauty | [48] |
| [PART SECOND] ART IN THE TEACHING OF LITERATURE | |
| IX LOOKING FORWARD IN LITERATURE | |
| Literature taught for use in Greece, Rome, and elsewhere—Science and history always changing; literature lasting—Object of literature in university—True humanism, equipping man’s faculties with art—Every school subject teaches its like—Correlations of literature and creation—Contemporary literature not suitable—Scientific study partly; artistic study is wholly satisfying | [57] |
| X UNIFYING EDUCATION THROUGH LITERATURE | |
| Necessity of unity—In university through profession—No unity in college electivism—Unity impaired by departments and by specializing—Unity in France, Germany and England—Departmental system destroying the art appeal of literature—Science through knowing; art through doing—Recent mental tests accentuate expression and language—General education through art of literature | [64] |
| XI THE INTERESTING TEACHER OF LITERATURE | |
| Spread of science—System and eliminating of personality—Dissertations for the doctorate—Scholarly means encyclopedic—The impersonal lecturer—Justin McCarthy’s teacher and his methods—Not scientific specialization, but exercise of mental powers—Formulas and personality—Another interesting teacher—Literature educates equally with science—The ideal | [70] |
| XII EDUCATING THE EMOTIONS | |
| Life full of emotions—Emotions intense in our crowded civilization—Morale, organized emotion—Emotions neglected in education—Education of facts dominating schools—Twofold nature of emotions—Emotions from concrete imagining—Kindled by contact—Literature embodiment of emotions—Emotions developed by self-expression and controlled by exercise | [83] |
| XIII KEEP THE CLASSICS BUT TEACH THEM | |
| Classics to be kept but taught differently—Former help of translation—Literature overwhelmed by erudition—Germany, France, England, America—True use of erudition—Natural sciences change; art endures—Reproduction, the soul of literary teaching—Method of training—Modern literatures not yet able to supplant ancient literatures | [91] |
| XIV THE VITALIZER OF THE WORLD | |
| Literary renaissances associated with Greek literature—Revivals through Irish monks—Spain, France, Scholasticism—Germany with Wolf, Winckelmann, Lessing—England under Queen Anne and Queen Victoria—Youth of civilization in Greece | [100] |
| XV TRUE PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC CRITICISM | |
| Story of Phidias’ statue and Homer—Homer tested by art—Flaws in material—Absorption in immediate effects—Told story different from story read—Outline of a study on a broad scale—Variety, alternation, growth in Homeric battling—Homeric palace, the place of Homer’s recital | [106] |
| XVI THE CHILD-TEST OF LITERATURE | |
| Child-test in religion and morals, in the Bible—Homer’s mother and child—Hector and Andromache—Child in later literature rare—Latin writers—Conventionality instead of Homeric naturalness | [114] |
| XVII THE CHRIST-CHILD TEST OF LITERATURE | |
| Christ-Child in art—Christmas and the drama—In Ireland—Medieval and Renaissance writers—Milton’s war-like child—Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Longfellow—Return of naturalness in Stevenson, Carroll and others—Faith and its effects in Thompson and Tabb | [119] |
| [APPENDIX] | |
| GREEK SPEAKS FOR ITSELF | |
| Mosaic of etymology—Ecclesiastical sphere—Diet, posies and programs—Geography, zoology, politics—Pharmacies and surgery—Schools and composition—Apology and epitaph | [129] |
| NOTE: THE NATURE OF ESTHETIC ENJOYMENT | |
| Ownership not of the essence of beauty as of good—Perception sufficient for the enjoyment of the beautiful—No new faculty required—Pleasure is normal life consciously localized—Esthetic Enjoyment in the simple apprehension, not in judgment or inference as such—Fact not of the essence of esthetic enjoyment, which is had in fiction too—Causa Exemplaris—Imagination, source of originality—Aristotle’s principles: creation, motivation, unity, universality | [134] |
| A FORWARD-LOOKING LESSON IN LITERATURE | [159] |
ART PRINCIPLES IN LITERATURE
PART FIRST
ART IN THE APPRECIATION OF LITERATURE
I
ART AND THE INDIVIDUAL
1. INDIVIDUALISM AND RESPONSIBILITY
A group was standing before a futurist or cubist picture. The group did not know what the picture was all about, but one spoke up in defense of the bewildering work: “Well, after all, art is a language, and why shouldn’t a man be permitted to speak his own language?” A bystander, not daring to address strangers, made answer under his breath: “If art is a language, this artist is talking to himself.” Maudlin, incoherent remarks, disjointed utterances, and in general talking to one’s self, all that, does not pass for high art among men, but for something quite different. To talk to one’s self is the extreme of individualism in conversation; to ignore the world addressed through artistic composition is the triumph of individualism in art.
The abrupt break with all tradition in every art, and the untrammeled expression of the individual, have worked out to the inevitable and bizarre conclusions which a like rebellion has brought about in religion and morals. Every man his own dogmatist; every man his own moralist; that is the individualism which has divided mankind into multitudinous sects and has made millions of moral, unmoral and immoral moralists eager for legislation of infinite variety without any fixed principles to enforce the observance of even one law. Conscience, the executive impulse of all legislation, used to be the voice of God, but individualism has made it anything from a survival of the fittest or an economic standard, through countless varieties all the way to a Freudian complex.