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Title: Censorship and Art
Author: John Galsworthy
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STUDIES AND ESSAYS
By John Galsworthy
"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
-ANATOLE FRANCE
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
ABOUT CENSORSHIP
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART
ABOUT CENSORSHIP
Since, time and again, it has been proved, in this country of free
institutions, that the great majority of our fellow-countrymen
consider the only Censorship that now obtains amongst us, namely the
Censorship of Plays, a bulwark for the preservation of their comfort
and sensibility against the spiritual researches and speculations of
bolder and too active spirits--it has become time to consider whether
we should not seriously extend a principle, so grateful to the
majority, to all our institutions.
For no one can deny that in practice the Censorship of Drama works
with a smooth swiftness--a lack of delay and friction unexampled in
any public office. No troublesome publicity and tedious postponement
for the purpose of appeal mar its efficiency. It is neither hampered
by the Law nor by the slow process of popular election. Welcomed by
the overwhelming majority of the public; objected to only by such
persons as suffer from it, and a negligible faction, who, wedded
pedantically to liberty of the subject, are resentful of summary
powers vested in a single person responsible only to his own
'conscience'--it is amazingly, triumphantly, successful.
Why, then, in a democratic State, is so valuable a protector of the
will, the interests, and pleasure of the majority not bestowed on
other branches of the public being? Opponents of the Censorship of
Plays have been led by the absence of such other Censorships to
conclude that this Office is an archaic survival, persisting into
times that have outgrown it. They have been known to allege that the
reason of its survival is simply the fact that Dramatic Authors,
whose reputation and means of livelihood it threatens, have ever been
few in number and poorly organised--that the reason, in short, is the
helplessness and weakness of the interests concerned. We must all
combat with force such an aspersion on our Legislature. Can it even
for a second be supposed that a State which gives trial by Jury to
the meanest, poorest, most helpless of its citizens, and concedes to
the greatest criminals the right of appeal, could have debarred a
body of reputable men from the ordinary rights of citizenship for so
cynical a reason as that their numbers were small, their interests
unjoined, their protests feeble? Such a supposition were
intolerable! We do not in this country deprive a class of citizens
of their ordinary rights, we do not place their produce under the
irresponsible control of one not amenable to Law, by any sort of
political accident! That would indeed be to laugh at Justice in this
Kingdom! That would indeed be cynical and unsound! We must never
admit that there is no basic Justice controlling the edifice of our
Civic Rights. We do, we must, conclude that a just and well-
considered principle underlies this despotic Institution; for surely,
else, it would not be suffered to survive for a single moment! Pom!
Pom!
If, then, the Censorship of Plays be just, beneficent, and based on a
well-considered principle, we must rightly inquire what good and
logical reason there is for the absence of Censorship in other
departments of the national life. If Censorship of the Drama be in
the real interests of the people, or at all events in what the Censor
for the time being conceives to be their interest--then Censorships
of Art, Literature, Religion, Science, and Politics are in the
interests of the people, unless it can be proved that there exists
essential difference between the Drama and these other branches of
the public being. Let us consider whether there is any such
essential difference.
It is fact, beyond dispute, that every year numbers of books appear
which strain the average reader's intelligence and sensibilities to
an unendurable extent; books whose speculations are totally unsuited
to normal thinking powers; books which contain views of morality
divergent from the customary, and discussions of themes unsuited to
the young person; books which, in fine, provide the greater Public
with no pleasure whatsoever, and, either by harrowing their feelings
or offending their good taste, cause them real pain.
It is true that, precisely as in the case of Plays, the Public are
protected by a vigilant and critical Press from works of this
description; that, further, they are protected by the commercial
instinct of the Libraries, who will not stock an article which may
offend their customers--just as, in the case of Plays, the Public are
protected by the common-sense of theatrical Managers; that, finally,
they are protected by the Police and the Common Law of the land. But
despite all these protections, it is no uncommon thing for an average
citizen to purchase one of these disturbing or dubious books. Has
he, on discovering its true nature, the right to call on the
bookseller to refund its value? He has not. And thus he runs a
danger obviated in the case of the Drama which has the protection of
a prudential Censorship. For this reason alone, how much better,
then, that there should exist a paternal authority (some, no doubt,
will call it grand-maternal--but sneers must not be confounded with
argument) to suppress these books before appearance, and safeguard us
from the danger of buying and possibly reading undesirable or painful
literature!
A specious reason, however, is advanced for exempting Literature from
the Censorship accorded to Plays. He--it is said--who attends the
performance of a play, attends it in public, where his feelings may
be harrowed and his taste offended, cheek by jowl with boys, or women
of all ages; it may even chance that he has taken to this
entertainment his wife, or the young persons of his household. He--
on the other hand--who reads a book, reads it in privacy. True; but
the wielder of this argument has clasped his fingers round a two-
edged blade. The very fact that the book has no mixed audience
removes from Literature an element which is ever the greatest check
on licentiousness in Drama. No manager of a theatre,--a man of the
world engaged in the acquisition of his livelihood, unless guaranteed
by the license of the Censor, dare risk the presentment before a
mixed audience of that which might cause an 'emeute' among his
clients. It has, indeed, always been observed that the theatrical
manager, almost without exception, thoughtfully recoils from the
responsibility that would be thrust on him by the abolition of the
Censorship. The fear of the mixed audience is ever suspended above
his head. No such fear threatens the publisher, who displays his
wares to one man at a time. And for this very reason of the mixed
audience; perpetually and perversely cited to the contrary by such as
have no firm grasp of this matter, there is a greater necessity for a
Censorship on Literature than for one on Plays.
Further, if there were but a Censorship of Literature, no matter how
dubious the books that were allowed to pass, the conscience of no
reader need ever be troubled. For, that the perfect rest of the
public conscience is the first result of Censorship, is proved to
certainty by the protected Drama, since many dubious plays are yearly
put before the play-going Public without tending in any way to
disturb a complacency engendered by the security from harm guaranteed
by this beneficent, if despotic, Institution. Pundits who, to the
discomfort of the populace, foster this exemption of Literature from
discipline, cling to the old-fashioned notion that ulcers should be
encouraged to discharge themselves upon the surface, instead of being
quietly and decently driven into the system and allowed to fester
there.
The remaining plea for exempting Literature from Censorship, put
forward by unreflecting persons: That it would require too many
Censors--besides being unworthy, is, on the face of it, erroneous.
Special tests have never been thought necessary in appointing
Examiners of Plays. They would, indeed, not only be unnecessary, but
positively dangerous, seeing that the essential function of
Censorship is protection of the ordinary prejudices and forms of
thought. There would, then, be no difficulty in securing tomorrow as
many Censors of Literature as might be necessary (say twenty or
thirty); since all that would be required of each one of them would
be that he should secretly exercise, in his uncontrolled discretion,
his individual taste. In a word, this Free Literature of ours
protects advancing thought and speculation; and those who believe in
civic freedom subject only to Common Law, and espouse the cause of
free literature, are championing a system which is essentially
undemocratic, essentially inimical to the will of the majority, who
have certainly no desire for any such things as advancing thought and
speculation. Such persons, indeed, merely hold the faith that the
People, as a whole, unprotected by the despotic judgments of single
persons, have enough strength and wisdom to know what is and what is
not harmful to themselves. They put their trust in a Public Press
and a Common Law, which deriving from the Conscience of the Country,
is openly administered and within the reach of all. How absurd, how
inadequate this all is we see from the existence of the Censorship on
Drama.
Having observed that there is no reason whatever for the exemption of
Literature, let us now turn to the case of Art. Every picture hung
in a gallery, every statue placed on a pedestal, is exposed to the
public stare of a mixed company. Why, then, have we no Censorship to
protect us from the possibility of encountering works that bring
blushes to the cheek of the young person? The reason cannot be that
the proprietors of Galleries are more worthy of trust than the
managers of Theatres; this would be to make an odious distinction
which those very Managers who uphold the Censorship of Plays would be
the first to resent. It is true that Societies of artists and the
proprietors of Galleries are subject to the prosecution of the Law if
they offend against the ordinary standards of public decency; but
precisely the same liability attaches to theatrical managers and
proprietors of Theatres, in whose case it has been found necessary
and beneficial to add the Censorship. And in this connection let it
once more be noted how much more easily the ordinary standards of
public decency can be assessed by a single person responsible to no
one, than by the clumsy (if more open) process of public protest.
What, then, in the light of the proved justice and efficiency of the
Censorship of Drama, is the reason for the absence of the Censorship
of Art? The more closely the matter is regarded, the more plain it
is, that there is none! At any moment we may have to look upon some
painting, or contemplate some statue, as tragic, heart-rending, and
dubiously delicate in theme as that censured play "The Cenci," by one
Shelley; as dangerous to prejudice, and suggestive of new thought as
the censured "Ghosts," by one Ibsen. Let us protest against this
peril suspended over our heads, and demand the immediate appointment
of a single person not selected for any pretentiously artistic
feelings, but endowed with summary powers of prohibiting the
exhibition, in public galleries or places, of such works as he shall
deem, in his uncontrolled discretion, unsuited to average
intelligence or sensibility. Let us demand it in the interest, not
only of the young person, but of those whole sections of the
community which cannot be expected to take an interest in Art, and to
whom the purpose, speculations, and achievements of great artists,
working not only for to-day but for to-morrow, must naturally be dark
riddles. Let us even require that this official should be empowered
to order the destruction of the works which he has deemed unsuited to
average intelligence and sensibility, lest their creators should, by
private sale, make a profit out of them, such as, in the nature of
the case, Dramatic Authors are debarred from making out of plays
which, having been censured, cannot be played for money. Let us ask
this with confidence; for it is not compatible with common justice
that there should be any favouring of Painter over Playwright. They
are both artists--let them both be measured by the same last!
But let us now consider the case of Science. It will not, indeed
cannot, be contended that the investigations of scientific men,
whether committed to writing or to speech, are always suited to the
taste and capacities of our general public. There was, for example,
the well-known doctrine of Evolution, the teachings of Charles Darwin
and Alfred Russet Wallace, who gathered up certain facts, hitherto
but vaguely known, into presentments, irreverent and startling,
which, at the time, profoundly disturbed every normal mind. Not only
did religion, as then accepted, suffer in this cataclysm, but our
taste and feeling were inexpressibly shocked by the discovery, so
emphasised by Thomas Henry Huxley, of Man's descent from Apes. It
was felt, and is felt by many to this day, that the advancement of
that theory grossly and dangerously violated every canon of decency.
What pain, then, might have been averted, what far-reaching
consequences and incalculable subversion of primitive faiths checked,
if some judicious Censor of scientific thought had existed in those
days to demand, in accordance with his private estimate of the will
and temper of the majority, the suppression of the doctrine of
Evolution.
Innumerable investigations of scientists on subjects such as the date
of the world's creation, have from time to time been summarised and
inconsiderately sprung on a Public shocked and startled by the
revelation that facts which they were accustomed to revere were
conspicuously at fault. So, too, in the range of medicine, it would
be difficult to cite any radical discovery (such as the preventive
power of vaccination), whose unchecked publication has not violated
the prejudices and disturbed the immediate comfort of the common
mind. Had these discoveries been judiciously suppressed, or pared
away to suit what a Censorship conceived to be the popular palate of
the time, all this disturbance and discomfort might have been
avoided.
It will doubtless be contended (for there are no such violent
opponents of Censorship as those who are threatened with the same)
that to compare a momentous disclosure, such as the doctrine of
Evolution, to a mere drama, were unprofitable. The answer to this
ungenerous contention is fortunately plain. Had a judicious
Censorship existed over our scientific matters, such as for two
hundred years has existed over our Drama, scientific discoveries
would have been no more disturbing and momentous than those which we
are accustomed to see made on our nicely pruned and tutored stage.
For not only would the more dangerous and penetrating scientific
truths have been carefully destroyed at birth, but scientists, aware
that the results of investigations offensive to accepted notions
would be suppressed, would long have ceased to waste their time in
search of a knowledge repugnant to average intelligence, and thus
foredoomed, and have occupied themselves with services more agreeable
to the public taste, such as the rediscovery of truths already known
and published.
Indissolubly connected with the desirability of a Censorship of
Science, is the need for Religious Censorship. For in this,
assuredly not the least important department of the nation's life, we
are witnessing week by week and year by year, what in the light of
the security guaranteed by the Censorship of Drama, we are justified
in terming an alarming spectacle. Thousands of men are licensed to
proclaim from their pulpits, Sunday after Sunday, their individual
beliefs, quite regardless of the settled convictions of the masses of
their congregations. It is true, indeed, that the vast majority of
sermons (like the vast majority of plays) are, and will always be,
harmonious with the feelings--of the average citizen; for neither
priest nor playwright have customarily any such peculiar gift of
spiritual daring as might render them unsafe mentors of their
fellows; and there is not wanting the deterrent of common-sense to
keep them in bounds. Yet it can hardly be denied that there spring
up at times men--like John Wesley or General Booth--of such incurable
temperament as to be capable of abusing their freedom by the
promulgation of doctrine or procedure, divergent from the current
traditions of religion. Nor must it be forgotten that sermons, like
plays, are addressed to a mixed audience of families, and that the
spiritual teachings of a lifetime may be destroyed by ten minutes of
uncensored pronouncement from a pulpit, the while parents are
sitting, not, as in a theatre vested with the right of protest, but
dumb and excoriated to the soul, watching their children, perhaps of
tender age, eagerly drinking in words at variance with that which
they themselves have been at such pains to instil.
If a set of Censors--for it would, as in the case of Literature,
indubitably require more than one (perhaps one hundred and eighty,
but, for reasons already given, there should be no difficulty
whatever in procuring them) endowed with the swift powers conferred
by freedom from the dull tedium of responsibility, and not remarkable
for religious temperament, were appointed, to whom all sermons and
public addresses on religious subjects must be submitted before
delivery, and whose duty after perusal should be to excise all
portions not conformable to their private ideas of what was at the
moment suitable to the Public's ears, we should be far on the road
toward that proper preservation of the status quo so desirable if the
faiths and ethical standards of the less exuberantly spiritual masses
are to be maintained in their full bloom. As things now stand, the
nation has absolutely nothing to safeguard it against religious
progress.
We have seen, then, that Censorship is at least as necessary over
Literature, Art, Science, and Religion as it is over our Drama. We
have now to call attention to the crowning need--the want of a
Censorship in Politics.
If Censorship be based on justice, if it be proved to serve the
Public and to be successful in its lonely vigil over Drama, it
should, and logically must be, extended to all parallel cases; it
cannot, it dare not, stop short at--Politics. For, precisely in this
supreme branch of the public life are we most menaced by the rule and
license of the leading spirit. To appreciate this fact, we need only
examine the Constitution of the House of Commons. Six hundred and
seventy persons chosen from a population numbering four and forty
millions, must necessarily, whatever their individual defects, be
citizens of more than average enterprise, resource, and resolution.
They are elected for a period that may last five years. Many of them
are ambitious; some uncompromising; not a few enthusiastically eager
to do something for their country; filled with designs and
aspirations for national or social betterment, with which the masses,
sunk in the immediate pursuits of life, can in the nature of things
have little sympathy. And yet we find these men licensed to pour
forth at pleasure, before mixed audiences, checked only by Common Law
and Common Sense political utterances which may have the gravest, the
most terrific consequences; utterances which may at any moment let
loose revolution, or plunge the country into war; which often, as a
fact, excite an utter detestation, terror, and mistrust; or shock the
most sacred domestic and proprietary convictions in the breasts of
vast majorities of their fellow-countrymen! And we incur this
appalling risk for the want of a single, or at the most, a handful of
Censors, invested with a simple but limitless discretion to excise or
to suppress entirely such political utterances as may seem to their
private judgments calculated to cause pain or moral disturbance in
the average man. The masses, it is true, have their protection and
remedy against injudicious or inflammatory politicians in the Law and
the so-called democratic process of election; but we have seen that
theatre audiences have also the protection of the Law, and the remedy
of boycott, and that in their case, this protection and this remedy
are not deemed enough. What, then, shall we say of the case of
Politics, where the dangers attending inflammatory or subversive
utterance are greater a million fold, and the remedy a thousand times
less expeditious?
Our Legislators have laid down Censorship as the basic principle of
Justice underlying the civic rights of dramatists. Then, let
"Censorship for all" be their motto, and this country no longer be
ridden and destroyed by free Institutions! Let them not only
establish forthwith Censorships of Literature, Art, Science, and
Religion, but also place themselves beneath the regimen with which
they have calmly fettered Dramatic Authors. They cannot deem it
becoming to their regard for justice, to their honour; to their sense
of humour, to recoil from a restriction which, in a parallel case
they have imposed on others. It is an old and homely saying that
good officers never place their men in positions they would not
themselves be willing to fill. And we are not entitled to believe
that our Legislators, having set Dramatic Authors where they have
been set, will--now that their duty is made plain--for a moment
hesitate to step down and stand alongside.
But if by any chance they should recoil, and thus make answer: "We
are ready at all times to submit to the Law and the People's will,
and to bow to their demands, but we cannot and must not be asked to
place our calling, our duty, and our honour beneath the irresponsible
rule of an arbitrary autocrat, however sympathetic with the
generality he may chance to be!" Then, we would ask: "Sirs, did you
ever hear of that great saying: 'Do unto others as ye would they
should do unto you!'" For it is but fair presumption that the
Dramatists, whom our Legislators have placed in bondage to a despot,
are, no less than those Legislators, proud of their calling,
conscious of their duty, and jealous of their honour.
1909.
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART
It was on a day of rare beauty that I went out into the fields to try
and gather these few thoughts. So golden and sweetly hot it was,
that they came lazily, and with a flight no more coherent or
responsible than the swoop of the very swallows; and, as in a play or
poem, the result is conditioned by the conceiving mood, so I knew
would be the nature of my diving, dipping, pale-throated, fork-tailed
words. But, after all--I thought, sitting there--I need not take my
critical pronouncements seriously. I have not the firm soul of the
critic. It is not my profession to know 'things for certain, and to
make others feel that certainty. On the contrary, I am often wrong--
a luxury no critic can afford. And so, invading as I was the realm
of others, I advanced with a light pen, feeling that none, and least
of all myself, need expect me to be right.
What then--I thought--is Art? For I perceived that to think about it
I must first define it; and I almost stopped thinking at all before
the fearsome nature of that task. Then slowly in my mind gathered
this group of words:
Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through
technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile
the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal
emotion. And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest
impersonal emotion in an hypothecated perfect human being.
Impersonal emotion! And what--I thought do I mean by that? Surely I
mean: That is not Art, which, while I, am contemplating it, inspires
me with any active or directive impulse; that is Art, when, for
however brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by
interest in itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a
carved marble bath. If my thoughts be "What could I buy that for?"
Impulse of acquisition; or: "From what quarry did it come?" Impulse
of inquiry; or: "Which would be the right end for my head?" Mixed
impulse of inquiry and acquisition--I am at that moment insensible to
it as a work of Art. But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of
its colour and forms, if ever so little and for ever so short a time,
unhaunted by any definite practical thought or impulse--to that
extent and for that moment it has stolen me away out of myself and
put itself there instead; has linked me to the universal by making me
forget the individual in me. And for that moment, and only while
that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The word "impersonal,"
then, is but used in this my definition to signify momentary
forgetfulness of one's own personality and its active wants.
So Art--I thought--is that which, heard, read, or looked on, while
producing no directive impulse, warms one with unconscious vibration.
Nor can I imagine any means of defining what is the greatest Art,
without hypothecating a perfect human being. But since we shall
never see, or know if we do see, that desirable creature--dogmatism
is banished, "Academy" is dead to the discussion, deader than even
Tolstoy left it after his famous treatise "What is Art?" For, having
destroyed all the old Judges and Academies, Tolstoy, by saying that
the greatest Art was that which appealed to the greatest number of
living human beings, raised up the masses of mankind to be a definite
new Judge or Academy, as tyrannical and narrow as ever were those
whom he had destroyed.
This, at all events--I thought is as far as I dare go in defining
what Art is. But let me try to make plain to myself what is the
essential quality that gives to Art the power of exciting this
unconscious vibration, this impersonal emotion. It has been called
Beauty! An awkward word--a perpetual begging of the question; too
current in use, too ambiguous altogether; now too narrow, now too
wide--a word, in fact, too glib to know at all what it means. And
how dangerous a word--often misleading us into slabbing with
extraneous floridities what would otherwise, on its own plane, be
Art! To be decorative where decoration is not suitable, to be
lyrical where lyricism is out of place, is assuredly to spoil Art,
not to achieve it. But this essential quality of Art has also, and
more happily, been called Rhythm. And, what is Rhythm if not that
mysterious harmony between part and part, and part and whole, which
gives what is called life; that exact proportion, the mystery of
which is best grasped in observing how life leaves an animate
creature when the essential relation of part to whole has been
sufficiently disturbed. And I agree that this rhythmic relation of
part to part, and part to whole--in short, vitality--is the one
quality inseparable from a work of Art. For nothing which does not
seem to a man possessed of this rhythmic vitality, can ever steal him
out of himself.
And having got thus far in my thoughts, I paused, watching the
swallows; for they seemed to me the symbol, in their swift, sure
curvetting, all daring and balance and surprise, of the delicate
poise and motion of Art, that visits no two men alike, in a world
where no two things of all the things there be, are quite the same.
Yes--I thought--and this Art is the one form of human energy in the
whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers
between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement,
however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human
life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is
grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up
within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be
stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that
itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement.
The active amusements and relaxations of life can only rest certain
of our faculties, by indulging others; the whole self is never rested
save through that unconsciousness of self, which comes through rapt
contemplation of Nature or of Art.
And suddenly I remembered that some believe that Art does not produce
unconsciousness of self, but rather very vivid self-realisation.
Ah! but--I though--that is not the first and instant effect of Art;
the new impetus is the after effect of that momentary replacement of
oneself by the self of the work before us; it is surely the result of
that brief span of enlargement, enfranchisement, and rest.
Yes, Art is the great and universal refreshment. For Art is never
dogmatic; holds no brief for itself you may take it or you may leave
it. It does not force itself rudely where it is not wanted. It is
reverent to all tempers, to all points of view. But it is wilful--
the very wind in the comings and goings of its influence, an
uncapturable fugitive, visiting our hearts at vagrant, sweet moments;
since we often stand even before the greatest works of Art without
being able quite to lose ourselves! That restful oblivion comes, we
never quite know when--and it is gone! But when it comes, it is a
spirit hovering with cool wings, blessing us from least to greatest,
according to our powers; a spirit deathless and varied as human life
itself.
And in what sort of age--I thought--are artists living now? Are
conditions favourable? Life is very multiple; full of "movements,"
"facts," and "news"; with the limelight terribly turned on--and all
this is adverse to the artist. Yet, leisure is abundant; the
facilities for study great; Liberty is respected--more or less. But,
there is one great reason why, in this age of ours, Art, it seems,
must flourish. For, just as cross-breeding in Nature--if it be not
too violent--often gives an extra vitality to the offspring, so does
cross-breeding of philosophies make for vitality in Art. I cannot
help thinking that historians, looking back from the far future, will
record this age as the Third Renaissance. We who are lost in it,
working or looking on, can neither tell what we are doing, nor where
standing; but we cannot help observing, that, just as in the Greek
Renaissance, worn-out Pagan orthodoxy was penetrated by new
philosophy; just as in the Italian Renaissance, Pagan philosophy,
reasserting itself, fertilised again an already too inbred Christian
creed; so now Orthodoxy fertilised by Science is producing a fresh
and fuller conception of life--a, love of Perfection, not for hope of
reward, not for fear of punishment, but for Perfection's sake.
Slowly, under our feet, beneath our consciousness, is forming that
new philosophy, and it is in times of new philosophies that Art,
itself in essence always a discovery, must flourish. Those whose
sacred suns and moons are ever in the past, tell us that our Art is
going to the dogs; and it is, indeed, true that we are in confusion!
The waters are broken, and every nerve and sinew of the artist is
strained to discover his own safety. It is an age of stir and
change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in
spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the
time being made.
I ceased again to think, for the sun had dipped low, and the midges
were biting me; and the sounds of evening had begun, those
innumerable far-travelling sounds of man and bird and beast--so clear
and intimate--of remote countrysides at sunset. And for long I
listened, too vague to move my pen.
New philosophy--a vigorous Art! Are there not all the signs of it?
In music, sculpture, painting; in fiction--and drama; in dancing; in
criticism itself, if criticism be an Art. Yes, we are reaching out
to a new faith not yet crystallised, to a new Art not yet perfected;
the forms still to find-the flowers still to fashion!
And how has it come, this slowly growing faith in Perfection for
Perfection's sake? Surely like this: The Western world awoke one day
to find that it no longer believed corporately and for certain in
future life for the individual consciousness. It began to feel: I
cannot say more than that there may be--Death may be the end of man,
or Death may be nothing. And it began to ask itself in this
uncertainty: Do I then desire to go on living? Now, since it found
that it desired to go on living at least as earnestly as ever it did
before, it began to inquire why. And slowly it perceived that there
was, inborn within it, a passionate instinct of which it had hardly
till then been conscious--a sacred instinct to perfect itself, now,
as well as in a possible hereafter; to perfect itself because
Perfection was desirable, a vision to be adored, and striven for; a
dream motive fastened within the Universe; the very essential Cause
of everything. And it began to see that this Perfection, cosmically,
was nothing but perfect Equanimity and Harmony; and in human
relations, nothing but perfect Love and Justice. And Perfection
began to glow before the eyes of the Western world like a new star,
whose light touched with glamour all things as they came forth from
Mystery, till to Mystery they were ready to return.
This--I thought is surely what the Western world has dimly been
rediscovering. There has crept into our minds once more the feeling
that the Universe is all of a piece, Equipoise supreme; and all
things equally wonderful, and mysterious, and valuable. We have
begun, in fact, to have a glimmering of the artist's creed, that
nothing may we despise or neglect--that everything is worth the doing
well, the making fair--that our God, Perfection, is implicit
everywhere, and the revelation of Him the business of our Art.
And as I jotted down these words I noticed that some real stars had
crept up into the sky, so gradually darkening above the pollard lime-
trees; cuckoos, who had been calling on the thorn-trees all the
afternoon, were silent; the swallows no longer flirted past, but a
bat was already in career over the holly hedge; and round me the
buttercups were closing. The whole form and feeling of the world had
changed, so that I seemed to have before me a new picture hanging.
Ah! I thought Art must indeed be priest of this new faith in
Perfection, whose motto is: "Harmony, Proportion, Balance." For by
Art alone can true harmony in human affairs be fostered, true
Proportion revealed, and true Equipoise preserved. Is not the
training of an artist a training in the due relation of one thing
with another, and in the faculty of expressing that relation clearly;
and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self
the very essence of self--and passing that essence into other selves
by so delicate means that none shall see how it is done, yet be
insensibly unified? Is not the artist, of all men, foe and nullifier
of partisanship and parochialism, of distortions and extravagance,
the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern--Truth; for, if Truth be not
Spiritual Proportion I know not what it is. Truth it seems to me--is
no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the
varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but the
concrete expression of the most penetrating vision. Life seen
throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life
shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant;
Life, as it were, spiritually selected--that is Truth; a thing as
multiple, and changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and
as little to be bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: No
deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule--nothing attains
full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose
business is the creation of vital things.
That aesthete, to be sure, was right, when he said: "It is Style that
makes one believe in a thing; nothing but Style. "For, what is Style
in its true and broadest sense save fidelity to idea and mood, and
perfect balance in the clothing of them? And I thought: Can one
believe in the decadence of Art in an age which, however
unconsciously as yet, is beginning to worship that which Art
worships--Perfection-Style?
The faults of our Arts to-day are the faults of zeal and of
adventure, the faults and crudities of pioneers, the errors and
mishaps of the explorer. They must pass through many fevers, and
many times lose their way; but at all events they shall not go dying
in their beds, and be buried at Kensal Green. And, here and there,
amid the disasters and wreckage of their voyages of discovery, they
will find something new, some fresh way of embellishing life, or of
revealing the heart of things. That characteristic of to-day's Art--
the striving of each branch of Art to burst its own. boundaries--
which to many spells destruction, is surely of happy omen. The novel
straining to become the play, the play the novel, both trying to
paint; music striving to become story; poetry gasping to be music;
painting panting to be philosophy; forms, canons, rules, all melting
in the pot; stagnation broken up! In all this havoc there is much to
shock and jar even the most eager and adventurous. We cannot stand
these new-fangled fellows! They have no form! They rush in where
angels fear to tread. They have lost all the good of the old, and
given us nothing in its place! And yet--only out of stir and change
is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to
turn our backs on courage! It is well, indeed, that some should live
in closed studies with the paintings and the books of yesterday--such
devoted students serve Art in their own way. But the fresh-air world
will ever want new forms. We shall not get them without faith enough
to risk the old! The good will live, the bad will die; and tomorrow
only can tell us which is which!
Yes--I thought--we naturally take a too impatient view of the Art of
our own time, since we can neither see the ends toward which it is
almost blindly groping, nor the few perfected creations that will be
left standing amidst the rubble of abortive effort. An age must
always decry itself and extol its forbears. The unwritten history of
every Art will show us that. Consider the novel--that most recent
form of Art! Did not the age which followed Fielding lament the
treachery of authors to the Picaresque tradition, complaining that
they were not as Fielding and Smollett were? Be sure they did. Very
slowly and in spite of opposition did the novel attain in this
country the fulness of that biographical form achieved under
Thackeray. Very slowly, and in face of condemnation, it has been
losing that form in favour of a greater vividness which places before
the reader's brain, not historical statements, as it were, of motives
and of facts, but word-paintings of things and persons, so chosen and
arranged that the reader may see, as if at first hand, the spirit of
Life at work before him. The new novel has as many bemoaners as the
old novel had when it was new. It is no question of better or worse,
but of differing forms--of change dictated by gradual suitability to
the changing conditions of our social life, and to the ever fresh
discoveries of craftsmen, in the intoxication of which, old and
equally worthy craftsmanship is--by the way--too often for the moment
mislaid. The vested interests of life favour the line of least
resistance--disliking and revolting against disturbance; but one must
always remember that a spurious glamour is inclined to gather around
what is new. And, because of these two deflecting factors, those who
break through old forms must well expect to be dead before the new
forms they have unconsciously created have found their true level,
high or low, in the world of Art. When a thing is new how shall it
be judged? In the fluster of meeting novelty, we have even seen
coherence attempting to bind together two personalities so
fundamentally opposed as those of Ibsen and Bernard Shaw dramatists
with hardly a quality in common; no identity of tradition, or belief;
not the faintest resemblance in methods of construction or technique.
Yet contemporary; estimate talks of them often in the same breath.
They are new! It is enough. And others, as utterly unlike them
both. They too are new. They have as yet no label of their own then
put on some one else's!
And so--I thought it must always be; for Time is essential to the
proper placing and estimate of all Art. And is it not this feeling,
that contemporary judgments are apt to turn out a little ludicrous,
which has converted much criticism of late from judgment pronounced
into impression recorded--recreative statement--a kind, in fact, of
expression of the critic's self, elicited through contemplation of a
book, a play, a symphony, a picture? For this kind of criticism
there has even recently been claimed an actual identity with
creation. Esthetic judgment and creative power identical! That is a
hard saying. For, however sympathetic one may feel toward this new
criticism, however one may recognise that the recording of impression
has a wider, more elastic, and more lasting value than the delivery
of arbitrary judgment based on rigid laws of taste; however one may
admit that it approaches the creative gift in so far as it demands
the qualities of receptivity and reproduction--is there not still
lacking to this "new" critic something of that thirsting spirit of
discovery, which precedes the creation--hitherto so-called--of
anything? Criticism, taste, aesthetic judgment, by the very nature
of their task, wait till life has been focussed by the artists before
they attempt to reproduce the image which that imprisoned fragment of
life makes on the mirror of their minds. But a thing created springs
from a germ unconsciously implanted by the direct impact of
unfettered life on the whole range, of the creator's temperament; and
round the germ thus engendered, the creative artist--ever
penetrating, discovering, selecting--goes on building cell on cell,
gathered from a million little fresh impacts and visions. And to say
that this is also exactly what the recreative critic does, is to say
that the interpretative musician is creator in the same sense as is
the composer of the music that he interprets. If, indeed, these
processes be the same in kind, they are in degree so far apart that
one would think the word creative unfortunately used of both....
But this speculation--I thought--is going beyond the bounds of
vagueness. Let there be some thread of coherence in your thoughts,
as there is in the progress of this evening, fast fading into night.
Return to the consideration of the nature and purposes of Art! And
recognize that much of what you have thought will seem on the face of
it heresy to the school whose doctrine was incarnated by Oscar Wilde
in that admirable apotheosis of half-truths: "The Decay of the Art of
Lying." For therein he said: "No great artist ever sees things as
they really are." Yet, that half-truth might also be put thus: The
seeing of things as they really are--the seeing of a proportion
veiled from other eyes (together with the power of expression), is
what makes a man an artist. What makes him a great artist is a high
fervour of spirit, which produces a superlative, instead of a
comparative, clarity of vision.
Close to my house there is a group of pines with gnarled red limbs
flanked by beech-trees. And there is often a very deep blue sky
behind. Generally, that is all I see. But, once in a way, in those
trees against that sky I seem to see all the passionate life and glow
that Titian painted into his pagan pictures. I have a vision of
mysterious meaning, of a mysterious relation between that sky and
those trees with their gnarled red limbs and Life as I know it. And
when I have had that vision I always feel, this is reality, and all
those other times, when I have no such vision, simple unreality. If
I were a painter, it is for such fervent vision I should wait, before
moving brush: This, so intimate, inner vision of reality, indeed,
seems in duller moments well-nigh grotesque; and hence that other
glib half-truth: "Art is greater than Life itself." Art is, indeed,
greater than Life in the sense that the power of Art is the
disengagement from Life of its real spirit and significance. But in
any other sense, to say that Art is greater than Life from which it
emerges, and into which it must remerge, can but suspend the artist
over Life, with his feet in the air and his head in the clouds--Prig
masquerading as Demi-god. "Nature is no great Mother who has borne
us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to
life." Such is the highest hyperbole of the aesthetic creed. But
what is creative instinct, if not an incessant living sympathy with
Nature, a constant craving like that of Nature's own, to fashion
something new out of all that comes within the grasp of those
faculties with which Nature has endowed us? The qualities of vision,
of fancy, and of imaginative power, are no more divorced from Nature,
than are the qualities of common-sense and courage. They are rarer,
that is all. But in truth, no one holds such views. Not even those
who utter them. They are the rhetoric, the over-statement of half-
truths, by such as wish to condemn what they call "Realism," without
being temperamentally capable of understanding what "Realism" really
is.
And what--I thought--is Realism? What is the meaning of that word so
wildly used? Is it descriptive of technique, or descriptive of the
spirit of the artist; or both, or neither? Was Turgenev a realist?
No greater poet ever wrote in prose, nor any one who more closely
brought the actual shapes of men and things before us. No more
fervent idealists than Ibsen and Tolstoy ever lived; and none more
careful to make their people real. Were they realists? No more
deeply fantastic writer can I conceive than Dostoievsky, nor any who
has described actual situations more vividly. Was he a realist? The
late Stephen Crane was called a realist. Than whom no more
impressionistic writer ever painted with words. What then is the
heart of this term still often used as an expression almost of abuse?
To me, at all events--I thought--the words realism, realistic, have
no longer reference to technique, for which the words naturalism,
naturalistic, serve far better. Nor have they to do with the
question of imaginative power--as much demanded by realism as by
romanticism. For me, a realist is by no means tied to naturalistic
technique--he may be poetic, idealistic, fantastic, impressionistic,
anything but--romantic; that, in so far as he is a realist, he
cannot be. The word, in fact, characterises that artist whose
temperamental preoccupation is with revelation of the actual inter-
relating spirit of life, character, and thought, with a view to
enlighten himself and others; as distinguished from that artist whom
I call romantic--whose tempera mental purpose is invention of tale or
design with a view to delight himself and others. It is a question
of temperamental antecedent motive in the artist, and nothing more.
Realist--Romanticist! Enlightenment--Delight! That is the true
apposition. To make a revelation--to tell a fairy-tale! And either
of these artists may use what form he likes--naturalistic, fantastic,
poetic, impressionistic. For it is not by the form, but by the
purpose and mood of his art that he shall be known, as one or as the
other. Realists indeed--including the half of Shakespeare that was
realist not being primarily concerned to amuse their audience, are
still comparatively unpopular in a world made up for the greater part
of men of action, who instinctively reject all art that does not
distract them without causing them to think. For thought makes
demands on an energy already in full use; thought causes
introspection; and introspection causes discomfort, and disturbs the
grooves of action. To say that the object of the realist is to
enlighten rather than to delight, is not to say that in his art the
realist is not amusing himself as much as ever is the teller of a
fairy-tale, though he does not deliberately start out to do so; he is
amusing, too, a large part of mankind. For, admitted that the
abject, and the test of Art, is always the awakening of vibration, of
impersonal emotion, it is still usually forgotten that men fall,
roughly speaking, into two flocks: Those whose intelligence is
uninquiring in the face of Art, and does not demand to be appeased
before their emotions can be stirred; and those who, having a
speculative bent of mind, must first be satisfied by an enlightening
quality in a work of Art, before that work of Art can awaken in them
feeling. The audience of the realist is drawn from this latter type
of man; the much larger audience of the romantic artist from the
former; together with, in both cases, those fastidious few for whom
all Art is style and only style, and who welcome either kind, so long
as it is good enough.
To me, then--I thought--this division into Realism and Romance, so
understood, is the main cleavage in all the Arts; but it is hard to
find pure examples of either kind. For even the most determined
realist has more than a streak in him of the romanticist, and the
most resolute romanticist finds it impossible at times to be quite
unreal. Guido Reni, Watteau, Leighton were they not perhaps somewhat
pure romanticists; Rembrandt, Hogarth, Manet mainly realists;
Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, a blend. Dumas pere, and Scott, surely
romantic; Flaubert and Tolstoy as surely realists; Dickens and
Cervantes, blended. Keats and Swinburne romantic; Browning and
Whitman--realistic; Shakespeare and Goethe, both. The Greek
dramatists--realists. The Arabian Nights and Malory romantic. The
Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Old Testament, both realism and romance.
And if in the vagueness of my thoughts I were to seek for
illustration less general and vague to show the essence of this
temperamental cleavage in all Art, I would take the two novelists
Turgenev and Stevenson. For Turgenev expressed himself in stories
that must be called romances, and Stevenson employed almost always a
naturalistic technique. Yet no one would ever call Turgenev a
romanticist, or Stevenson a realist. The spirit of the first brooded
over life, found in it a perpetual voyage of spiritual adventure, was
set on discovering and making clear to himself and all, the varying
traits and emotions of human character--the varying moods of Nature;
and though he couched all this discovery in caskets of engaging
story, it was always clear as day what mood it was that drove him to
dip pen in ink. The spirit of the second, I think, almost dreaded to
discover; he felt life, I believe, too keenly to want to probe into
it; he spun his gossamer to lure himself and all away from life.
That was his driving mood; but the craftsman in him, longing to be
clear and poignant, made him more natural, more actual than most
realists.
So, how thin often is the hedge! And how poor a business the
partisan abuse of either kind of art in a world where each sort of
mind has full right to its own due expression, and grumbling lawful
only when due expression is not attained. One may not care for a
Rembrandt portrait of a plain old woman; a graceful Watteau
decoration may leave another cold but foolish will he be who denies
that both are faithful to their conceiving moods, and so proportioned
part to part, and part to whole, as to have, each in its own way,
that inherent rhythm or vitality which is the hall-mark of Art. He
is but a poor philosopher who holds a view so narrow as to exclude
forms not to his personal taste. No realist can love romantic Art so
much as he loves his own, but when that Art fulfils the laws of its
peculiar being, if he would be no blind partisan, he must admit it.
The romanticist will never be amused by realism, but let him not for
that reason be so parochial as to think that realism, when it
achieves vitality, is not Art. For what is Art but the perfected
expression of self in contact with the world; and whether that self
be of enlightening, or of fairy-telling temperament, is of no moment
whatsoever. The tossing of abuse from realist to romanticist and
back is but the sword-play of two one-eyed men with their blind side
turned toward each other. Shall not each attempt be judged on its
own merits? If found not shoddy, faked, or forced, but true to
itself, true to its conceiving mood, and fair-proportioned part to
whole; so that it lives--then, realistic or romantic, in the name of
Fairness let it pass! Of all kinds of human energy, Art is surely
the most free, the least parochial; and demands of us an essential
tolerance of all its forms. Shall we waste breath and ink in
condemnation of artists, because their temperaments are not our own?
But the shapes and colours of the day were now all blurred; every
tree and stone entangled in the dusk. How different the world seemed
from that in which I had first sat down, with the swallows flirting
past. And my mood was different; for each of those worlds had
brought to my heart its proper feeling--painted on my eyes the just
picture. And Night, that was coming, would bring me yet another mood
that would frame itself with consciousness at its own fair moment,
and hang before me. A quiet owl stole by in the geld below, and
vanished into the heart of a tree. And suddenly above the moor-line
I saw the large moon rising. Cinnamon-coloured, it made all things
swim, made me uncertain of my thoughts, vague with mazy feeling.
Shapes seemed but drifts of moon-dust, and true reality nothing save
a sort of still listening to the wind. And for long I sat, just
watching the moon creep up, and hearing the thin, dry rustle of the
leaves along the holly hedge. And there came to me this thought:
What is this Universe--that never had beginning and will never have
an end--but a myriad striving to perfect pictures never the same, so
blending and fading one into another, that all form one great
perfected picture? And what are we--ripples on the tides of a
birthless, deathless, equipoised Creative-Purpose--but little
works of Art?
Trying to record that thought, I noticed that my note-book was damp
with dew. The cattle were lying down. It was too dark to see.
1911
End of Project Gutenberg's Etext Studies and Essays: Censorship and Art
By John Galsworthy