If genius creates it does not imitate.
But genius, it is said, is then superior to nature, since it does not imitate it. Nature is the work of God; man is then the rival of God.
The answer is very simple. No, genius is not the rival of God; but it is the interpreter of him. Nature expresses him in its way, human genius expresses him in its own way.
Let us stop a moment at that question so much discussed,—whether art is any thing else than the imitation of nature.
Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation; for absolute creation belongs only to God. Where can genius find the elements upon which it works, except in nature, of which it forms a part? But does it limit itself to the reproduction of them as nature furnishes them to it, without adding any thing to them which belongs to itself? Is it only a copier of reality? Its sole merit, then, is that of the fidelity of the copy. And what labor is more sterile than that of copying works essentially inimitable on account of the life with which they are endowed, in order to obtain an indifferent image of them? If art is a servile pupil, it is condemned never to be any thing but an impotent pupil.
The true artist feels and profoundly admires nature; but every thing in nature is not equally admirable. As we have just said, it has something by which it infinitely surpasses art—its life. Besides that, art can, in its turn, surpass nature, on the condition of not wishing to imitate it too closely. Every natural object, however beautiful, is defective on some side. Every thing that is real is imperfect. Here, the horrible and the hideous are united to the sublime; there, elegance and grace are separated from grandeur and force. The traits of beauty are scattered and diverse. To reunite them arbitrarily, to borrow from such a face a mouth, eyes from such another, without any rule that governs this choice and directs these borrowings, is to compose monsters; to admit a rule, is already to admit an ideal different from all individuals. It is this ideal that the true artist forms to himself in studying nature. Without nature, he never would have conceived this ideal; but with this ideal, he judges nature herself, rectifies her, and dares undertake to measure himself with her.
The ideal is the artist's object of passionate contemplation. Assiduously and silently meditated, unceasingly purified by reflection and vivified by sentiment, it warms genius and inspires it with the irresistible need of seeing it realized and living. For this end, genius takes in nature all the materials that can serve it, and applying to them its powerful hand, as Michael Angelo impressed his chisel upon the docile marble, makes of them works that have no model in nature, that imitate nothing else than the ideal dreamed of or conceived, that are in some sort a second creation inferior to the first in individuality and life, but much superior to it, we do not fear to say, on account of the intellectual and moral beauty with which it is impressed.
Moral beauty is the foundation of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art disengages it, and gives to it forms more transparent. On this account, art, when it knows well its power and its resources, institutes with nature a contest in which it may have the advantage.
Let us establish well the end of art: it is precisely where its power lies. The end of art is the expression of moral beauty, by the aid of physical beauty. The latter is only a symbol of the former. In nature, this symbol is often obscure: art in bringing it to light attains effects that nature does not always produce. Nature may please more, for, once more, it possesses in an incomparable degree what makes the great charm of imagination and sight—life; art touches more, because in expressing, above all, moral beauty, it addresses itself more directly to the source of profound emotions. Art can be more pathetic than nature, and the pathetic is the sign and measure of great beauty.
Two extremes are equally dangerous—a lifeless ideal, or the absence of the ideal. Either we copy the model, and are wanting in true beauty, or we work de tête, and fall into an ideality without character. Genius is a ready and sure perception of the right proportion in which the ideal and the natural, form and thought, ought to be united. This union is the perfection of art: chefs-d'œuvre are produced by observing it.