Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good

by Victor Cousin

It is important, in my opinion, to follow this rule in teaching art. It is asked whether pupils should begin with the study of the ideal or the real. I do not hesitate to answer,—by both. Nature herself never offers the general without the individual, nor the individual without the general. Every figure is composed of individual traits which distinguish it from all others, and make its own looks, and, at the same time, it has general traits which constitute what is called the human figure. These general traits are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure is the type, that are given to the pupil that is beginning in the art of design to trace. It would also be good, I believe, in order to preserve him from the dry and abstract, to exercise him early in copying some natural object, especially a living figure. This would be putting pupils to the true school of nature. They would thus become accustomed never to sacrifice either of the two essential elements of the beautiful, either of the two imperative conditions of art.

But, in uniting these two elements, these two conditions, it is necessary to distinguish them, and to know how to put them in their place. There is no true ideal without determinate form, there is no unity without variety, no genus without individuals, but, in fine, the foundation of the beautiful is the idea; what makes art is before all, the realization of the idea, and not the imitation of such or such a particular form.

At the commencement of our century, the Institute of France offered a prize for the best answer to the following question: What were the causes of the perfection of the antique sculpture, and what would be the best means of attaining it? The successful competitor, M. Emeric David,[112] maintained the opinion then dominant, that the assiduous study of natural beauty had alone conducted the antique art to perfection, and that thus the imitation of nature was the only route to reach the same perfection. A man whom I do not fear to compare with Winkelmann, the future author of the Olympic Jupiter,[113] M. Quatremère de Quincy, in some ingenious and profound disquisitions,[114] combated the doctrine of the laureate, and defended the cause of ideal beauty. It is impossible to demonstrate more decidedly, by the entire history of Greek sculpture, and by authentic texts from the greatest critiques of antiquity, that the process of art among the Greeks was not the imitation of nature, either by a particular model, or by several, the most beautiful model being always very imperfect, and several models not being able to compose a single beauty. The true process of the Greek art was the representation of an ideal beauty which nature scarcely possessed more in Greece than among us, which it could not then offer to the artist. We regret that the honorable laureate, since become a member of the Institute, pretended that this expression of ideal beauty, if it had been known by the Greeks, would have meant visible beauty, because ideal comes from εἶδος, which signifies only, according to M. Emeric David, a form seen by the eye. Plato would have been much surprised at this exclusive interpretation of the word εἶδος. M. Quatremère de Quincy confounds his unequal adversary by two admirable texts, one from the Timæus, where Plato marks with precision in what the true artist is superior to the ordinary artist, the other at the commencement of the Orator, where Cicero explains the manner in which great artists work, in referring to the manner of Phidias, that is to say, the most perfect master of the most perfect epoch of art.

"The artist,[115] who, with eye fixed upon the immutable being, and using such a model, reproduces its idea and its excellence, cannot fail to produce a whole whose beauty is complete, whilst he who fixes his eye upon what is transitory, with this perishable model will make nothing beautiful."

"Phidias,[116] that great artist, when he made the form of Jupiter or Minerva, did not contemplate a model a resemblance of which he would express; but in the depth of his soul resided a perfect type of beauty, upon which he fixed his look, which guided his hand and his art."

Is not this process of Phidias precisely that which Raphael describes in the famous letter to Castiglione, which he declares that he followed himself for the Galatea?[117] "As," he says, "I am destitute of beautiful models, I use a certain ideal which I form for myself."

There is another theory which comes back, by a circuit, to imitation: it is that which makes illusion the end of art. If this theory be true, the ideal beauty of painting is a tromp-l'œil,[118] and its master-piece is the grapes of Zeuxis that the birds came and pecked at. The height of art in a theatrical piece would be to persuade you that you are in the presence of reality. What is true in this opinion is, that a work of art is beautiful only on the condition of being life-like, and, for example, the law of dramatic art is not to put on the stage pale phantoms of the past, but personages borrowed from imagination or history, as you like, but animated, endowed with passion, speaking and acting like men and not like shades. It is human nature that is to be represented to itself under a magic light that does not disfigure it, but ennobles it. This magic is the very genius of art. It lifts us above the miseries that besiege us, and transports us to regions where we still find ourselves, for we never wish to lose sight of ourselves, but where we find ourselves transformed to our advantage, where all the imperfections of reality have given place to a certain perfection, where the language that we speak is more equal and elevated, where persons are more beautiful, where the ugly is not admitted, and all this while duly respecting history, especially without ever going beyond the imperative conditions of human nature. Has art forgotten human nature? it has passed beyond its end, it has not attained it; it has brought forth nothing but chimeras without interest for our soul. Has it been too human, too real, too nude? it has fallen short of its end; it has then attained it no better.

Illusion is so little the end of art, that it may be complete and have no charm. Thus, in the interest of illusion, theatrical men have taken great pains in these latter times to secure historical accuracy of costume. This is all very well; but it is not the most important thing. Had you found, and lent to the actor who plays the part of Brutus, the very costume that of old the Roman hero wore, it would touch true connoisseurs very little. This is not all; when the illusion goes too far, the sentiment of art disappears in order to give place to a sentiment purely natural, sometimes insupportable. If I believed that Iphegenia were in fact on the point of being immolated by her father at a distance of twenty paces from me, I should leave the theatre trembling with horror. If the Ariadne that I see and hear, were the true Ariadne who is about to be betrayed by her sister, in that pathetic scene where the poor woman, who already feels herself less loved, asks who then robs her of the heart, once so tender, of Theseus, I would do as the young Englishman did, who cried out, sobbing and trying to spring upon the stage, "It is Phèdre, it is Phèdre!" as if he would warn and save Ariadne.