What Is Art?
Translated from the Original Manuscript, with
an Introduction by AYLMER MAUDE
Art is a human activity, declares Tolstoy. The object of this activity is to transmit to others feelings the artist has experienced. By certain external signs—movements, lines, colors, sounds or arrangements of words—an artist infects other people so that they share his feelings; thus, "art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling." Without adequate expression there is no art, for there is no infection, no transference to others of the author's feeling. The test of art is infection. If an author has moved you so that you feel as he felt, if you are so united to him in feeling that it seems to you that he has expressed just what you have long wished to express, the work that has so infected you is a work of art.
A POWERFUL WORK FULL OF
GENIUS AND ORIGINALITY
"The powerful personality of the author, the startling originality of his views, grip the reader and carry him, though his deepest convictions be outraged, protesting through the book."—Pall Mall Gazette.
"The discussion is bound to shake the whole world to its very center, and to result in a considerable readjustment of theories."—Pittsburg Times.
"It is the ablest and most scholarly writing of a great thinker."—Chicago Inter Ocean.
"No recent book on the subject is so novel, so readable, or so questionable."—New York Times Saturday Review.