Art and the human spirit
Date: 2026-03-09T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Aesthetics

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Title: Art and the human spirit

The meaning and relations of sculpture, painting, poetry and music

Author: Edward Howard Griggs

Release date: March 9, 2026 [eBook #78154]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1908

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78154

Credits: Alan, Tim Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ART AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT ***

ART AND
THE HUMAN SPIRIT

The Meaning and Relations of Sculpture,
Painting, Poetry and Music

A Handbook of Eight Lectures
By
EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS

NEW YORK
B. W. HUEBSCH
1908

Copyright, 1908
BY
Edward Howard Griggs

“I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven, and in their disciples and apostles; I believe in the Holy Ghost and the truth of Art—one and indivisible; I believe that this art proceeds from God and dwells in the hearts of all enlightened men; I believe that whoever has revelled in the glorious joys of this high art must be forever devoted to it and can never repudiate it; I believe that all may become blessed through this art, and that therefore it is permitted to any one to die of hunger for its sake; I believe that I shall become most happy through death; I believe that I have been on earth a discordant chord, that shall be made harmonious and clear by death. I believe in a last judgment, that shall fearfully damn all those who have dared on this earth to make profit out of this chaste and holy art—who have disgraced it and dishonored it through badness of heart and the coarse instincts of sensuality; I believe that such men will be condemned to hear their own music through all eternity. I believe, on the other hand, that the true disciples of pure art will be glorified in a divine atmosphere of sun-illumined, fragrant concords, and united eternally with the divine source of all harmony. And may a merciful lot be granted me! Amen!”

—Wagner, in “An End in Paris,” Art Life and Theories, p. 90.

INDEX

| | PAGE
| Note: Spirit of the Course | 7
1. | The Expression and Interpretation of Human Life in Art | 9
2. | The Primitive Sources of Art | 14
3. | The Race, the Epoch and the Individual in Art | 19
4. | The Meaning and Function of Sculpture and Painting | 24
5. | The Meaning and Function of Music | 29
6. | The Meaning and Function of Poetry | 35
7. | Literature and Liberal Culture | 40
8. | Beauty and the Culture of the Spirit | 45
| Suggestions to Students | 50
| Book List | 51

SPIRIT OF THE COURSE

THERE is evident in our country to-day a great turning of energy to the higher interests of human life, especially to the fine arts. Apparently some part of the enthusiasm and youthful power that has built so wonderful a material civilization is now set free for the pursuit of beauty and wisdom. We send our students far and wide to the schools and galleries of the old world; we build art museums in all our cities, and cultivate music with a new earnestness. Unfortunately the noble promise in this awakening is hampered by grave misconceptions as to the meaning of art in relation to the human spirit. Widely, among high and low alike, art is regarded as a pleasant adornment of life, worth seeking after the serious business of our existence is fulfilled, but quite dispensable meantime. Others—well-meaning people—hold art to be justified only by some obvious moral teaching it conveys. In reaction against this view and as a result of the difficult technical problems art presents, many artists fall into the equally unfortunate error of regarding art as primarily an exhibition of skill, interpreting “art for art’s sake” to mean art for technique’s sake.

There is no hope of giving art the place it should occupy in our culture until these errors have been overcome. We must learn that art is serious business, that beauty is the most useful thing we know, and that art is not for adornment’s sake, or preaching’s sake, or art’s sake, but that it is for life’s sake.

The aim of this course is, therefore, to consider as fully and searchingly as possible the place and meaning of the fine arts in relation to the spirit of man. We shall study first the unity of the arts, their expression and interpretation in common of the universal elements of human experience. Then the historic sources of the arts and the great forces that determine the specific characteristics of a masterpiece will be studied. The heart of the course will be an effort to define the particular meaning and function of each of the arts, the way in which it can express and interpret some phase of the common human life more effectively than any other. Finally, the work will close with a study of the ministry of the arts to man’s spirit and their place in culture.

If art is for life’s sake for the appreciative student, even more is it so for the creative artist. If often the lesser men have lived to paint, or carve, or write, or sing, the great masters have ever found art a way of life, have painted, carved, written, sung, to live,—that through creative expression in art they might grow up into the fullness of their own potential humanity. Thus it is necessary that every one should be an artist in this high sense of the word; and if that is impossible in what we call the fine arts, it is possible in the finest of all, the one supreme art of living. The need is, not that beauty should be added artificially to daily life, but that life itself, in work, relationship and environment, should be made a fine art. That this study may help a little to that end and so add something of the joy that comes from supreme beauty, redeeming the commonplace detail of life by clothing it with a transfiguring atmosphere and exalting the spirit to a place where a serene vision of life in relation is possible, is the hope with which the work is undertaken.

I. THE EXPRESSION AND INTERPRETATION
OF HUMAN LIFE IN ART

Art is the adequate and harmonious expression and interpretation of some phase of man’s life in true relation to the whole.

—Edward Howard Griggs.

Purpose of the course.—To consider the whole meaning of the fine arts; the relations they sustain to each other; the sources from which they spring; their two-fold relation to the human spirit,—as expressing and interpreting life and as contributing to the higher culture of man. The need and value of such study to-day, especially in America.

Popular superstitions in relation to art.—Misconceptions met on the threshold of our study: (1) The notion that art is a dispensable luxury, to be cultivated as an adornment of life after our serious business is accomplished. Prevalence of this error in the mind of the general public; among those who regard themselves as polite society. The artist’s bitter protest against this attitude in all epochs: compare Carlyle; Goethe.

(2) The notion prevailing in the minds of many good people that art is justified only by the moral lessons it teaches. Goethe’s view that this destroys the artist’s vocation. The ethical significance of true art organically in it, not tacked on in an Æsop’s fable moral at the end.

(3) In reaction against the second error, one prevailing in the minds of many artists below the highest rank: the notion that art is for the sake merely of exhibiting technical skill in the mastery of difficulties. Causes of this error.

Essential that these three misconceptions should be corrected before art can assume its rightful place in relation to our life. Our first questions therefore: What is art, and what relation does it sustain to the spirit of man?

Unity and variety in art.—Bewildering diversity of works of art: compare in the same art; in different arts. Thus difficulty of gathering all in a common statement. Yet the fact that we may appreciate all, indicating a common basis. The arts, moreover, springing from one historical source; while possible for the most highly developed works of art in different fields to produce the same dominant impression. Illustrate in the groups of men who are brothers across the centuries. The source of this unity in all art the expression everywhere of the same universal basis of human life.

The simple, generic elements of life as always expressed in art through the medium of personality. Thus true art ever fresh and vital—a new equation of old forces. Compare Homer’s Odyssey and Stephen Phillip’s Ulysses.

Not all expression art. The conditioning principles of adequacy and harmony of expression distinguishing true art from what fails to rise to its plane. The further principle that the part must be treated in sound relation to the whole of human life. Compare in the portrayal of moral evil. What distinguishes Dante and Shakespeare from the vicious type of novel in such portrayal.

Interpretation of life.—All expression involving as well some measure of interpretation; that is, all art inevitably ideal as well as real in the presentation of life and nature. Compare even in amateur photography: how there is inevitably selection of material and point of view. Compare in the novel that attempts merely a realistic portraiture of life. How even the selection of the part of the material out of the whole and the adoption of a view-point in its treatment, bringing certain elements into the foreground and subordinating others in the background, means putting life and nature through the transmuting spectrum of the artist’s spirit in expressing them.

Further elements of idealism.—Raising life to a higher plane of expression than is usual in the real world: compare the characters of Shakespeare; the paintings of Corot and Millet.

The tendency in art to carry the laws of life out full circle, thus giving an ethical completeness wanting in actual life.

The addition of a unifying and interpreting atmosphere. Compare in Titian; Beethoven; Dante.

The definition of art.—Summing up of all the aspects developed in the relation of art to the human spirit: thus the inclusive definition.

Hence the serious business of art. The relation of the beautiful to the useful. The meaning of art in the life of man.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“The useful encourages itself; for the multitude produce it, and no one can dispense with it: the beautiful must be encouraged; for few can set it forth, and many need it.”

—Goethe, Wilhelm Meister, translated by Carlyle (A. C. McClurg & Co., 1890), vol. 2, p. 129.

“I do not object to a dramatic poet having a moral influence in view; but when the point is to bring his subject clearly and effectively before his audience, his moral purpose proves of little use, and he needs much more a faculty for delineation and a familiarity with the stage to know what to do and what to leave undone. If there be a moral in the subject, it will appear, and the poet has nothing to consider but the effective and artistic treatment of his subject. If the poet has as high a soul as Sophocles, his influence will always be moral, let him do what he will.”

—Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann and Soret, p. 228.

“The praiseworthy object of pursuing everywhere moral good as the supreme aim, which has already brought forth in art so much mediocrity, has caused also in theory a similar prejudice. To assign to the fine arts a really elevated position, to conciliate for them the favour of the State, the veneration of all men, they are pushed beyond their true domain, and a vocation is imposed upon them contrary to their nature. It is supposed that a great service is awarded them by substituting for a frivolous aim,—that of charming—a moral aim; and their influence upon morality, which is so apparent, necessarily militates in favour of this pretension.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, pp. 361, 362.

“Just as the sun cannot shed its light but to the eye that sees it, nor music sound but to the hearing ear, so the value of all masterly work in art and science is conditioned by the kinship and capacity of the mind to which it speaks. It is only such a mind as this that possesses the magic word to stir and call forth the spirits that lie hidden in great work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is a sealed cabinet of mystery,—an unfamiliar musical instrument from which the player, however much he may flatter himself, can draw none but confused tones. How different a painting looks when seen in a good light, instead of in some dark corner! Just in the same way, the impression made by a masterpiece varies with the capacity of the mind to understand it.”

—Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature, p. 94.

“From the combined effort of the two schools of criticism, guardians of public tranquillity, there results a salutary reaction. This reaction has already produced some specimens of poets,—steady, well-bred, prudent, whose style always keeps good hours; who never indulge in an outing with those mad creatures, Ideas; who are never met at the corner of a wood, solus cum solâ, with Reverie, that gypsy girl; who are incapable of having relations either with Imagination, dangerous vagabond, or with the bacchante Inspiration, or with the grisette Fancy; who have never in their lives given a kiss to that beggarly chit, the Muse; who never sleep away from home, and who are honored with the esteem of their door-keeper, Nicholas Boileau. If Polyhymnia goes by with her hair floating a little, what a scandal! Quick! they call the hairdresser. M. de la Harpe comes hastily. These two sister schools of criticism, that of the doctrinaire and that of the sacristan, undertake to educate. They bring up little writers. They keep a place to wean them,—a boarding-school for juvenile reputations.”

—Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, pp. 208, 209.

“The passions, whether violent or not, must never be carried in their expression to the verge of disgust, and music, even in the most awful situations, must not offend the ear, but always please.”

—Mozart, in Kerst, Mozart: The Man and the Artist, pp. 34, 35.

“He was a good man and on that very account, a great man. For when a good man is gifted with talent, he always works morally for the salvation of the world, as poet, philosopher, artist, or in whatever way it may be.”

—Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann and Soret, p. 364.

“The historical painter also must take good care, if he would not produce a caricature, even in subjects of an action moved by passion, not to give every one of his figures the sharply imprinted expression of an emotion. Thus, Orcagna, in his Last Judgment (in the Campo santo at Pisa), represents with fearful truthfulness, and in a most startling manner, on the side of the damned, terrified surprise, horror, lamentation and despair; but for all that it would be but a crowd of people making faces if the artist did not contrast it with the uniformly tranquil, radiant joy on the faces of the saved, and the solemn gravity of the patriarchs and prophets. In Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper is placed by the side of the violent gesticulations and excited looks of some of the apostles, in well-calculated contrasting relief, the composed demeanor of others, especially of the one sitting at the right of the beholder at the end of the table, but particularly the divinely mild gravity and the sorrowful resignation of the principal figure in the middle. Even in the most tumultuous of all historical pictures, the celebrated Pompeian mosaic picture of Alexander’s battle, the universal horror at the fall of the commander-in-chief is completely portrayed only in some figures.”

—Ambros, The Boundaries of Music and Poetry, pp. 56, 57.

“Beauty results from the harmony between spirit and sense; it addresses all the faculties of man, and can only be appreciated if a man employs fully all his strength. He must bring to it an open sense, a broad heart, a spirit full of freshness. All a man’s nature must be on the alert, and this is not the case with those divided by abstraction, narrowed by formulas, enervated by application.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 330.

“A masterpiece exists once for all. The first poet who arrives, arrives at the summit. You shall ascend after him, as high, not higher. Ah! Your name is Dante? Very well; but he who sits yonder is named Homer!”

—Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, p. 101.

“The unpoetical lover of art, ensconced in his burgess-like comfort, is apt to take offence at any part of a poetical work which entails trouble on him, such as the solution, colouring or concealment of a problem. The somnolent reader wants everything to pursue its natural course, little imagining in his obstinate conceit how the extraordinary may also be natural.”

—Goethe, Travels in Italy, p. 466.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. What is common and universal in the subject-matter of the fine arts?

2. Compare Homer’s Odyssey and the Ulysses of Stephen Phillips as artistic treatments of the same theme.

3. Can you discover a musical composition and a work in painting that produce the same dominant impression with the Agamemnon Trilogy of Æschylus?

4. Can you find a type of poetry and of painting akin in impression to the music of Chopin?

5. What makes possible our common appreciation of works of art in widely different fields and coming from remotely separated races and epochs?

6. Explain how all the characters of Shakespeare can speak such beautiful poetry, and yet Shakespeare be regarded as the great realist in the portrayal of life.

7. What relation do the paintings of Corot sustain to Nature?

8. How far may moral disease wisely be portrayed in art?

9. Show what is necessary to make expression truly artistic.

10. Formulate your own definition of art.

REFERENCES

Note: See Book List, pp. 51-57, for publisher and place and date of publication of all books referred to.

Ambros, Boundaries of Music and Poetry. Carpenter, Angels’ Wings. Corson, Aims of Literary Study. Crawshaw, Literary Interpretation of Life. Emerson, Art (in Essays, first series, pp. 325-343); Art (in Society and Solitude, pp. 39-59). Hand, Æsthetics of Musical Art. Hugo, William Shakespeare. Knight, The Philosophy of the Beautiful. Lanier, Music and Poetry. Leighton, Addresses. Lewes, Principles of Success in Literature. Mabie, Short Studies in Literature. Parry, The Evolution of the Art of Music. Partridge, Art for America. Raymond, Art in Theory; Essentials of Æsthetics. Ruskin, Lectures on Art; Modern Painters; The Two Paths. Schiller, Essays. Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature. Shairp, Aspects of Poetry. Stedman, Nature and Elements of Poetry. Tolstoy, What is Art? Van Dyke, How to Judge of a Picture; Principles of Art. Wagner, Art Life and Theories of. Wilde, The Critic as Artist.

II. THE PRIMITIVE SOURCES OF ART

“The secret, mysterious relations of the human heart to the strange nature around it, have not yet come to an end. In its eloquent silence, this latter still speaks to the heart just as it did a thousand years ago; and what was told in the very gray of antiquity is understood to-day as easily as then. For this reason it is that the legend of nature ever remains the inexhaustible resource of the poet in his intercourse with his people.”

—Wagner, in “Der Freischütz in Paris,” Art Life and Theories, p. 99.

Evolution of the arts.—The primitive hymns sung in honor of a God and accompanied by interpretative dancing. How the various fine arts are differentiated from this historic basis. The same law of evolution applying to all expressions of life evident in the arts. A generic unity in the primitive basis, sometimes wanting in the later differentiated forms.

The original inspiration of art.—Significance in the fact that all art springs first from religion. Profound seriousness of early art. This religious earnestness persisting in all great art. Thus deep meaning in the primitive sources from which art springs.

The character of early art.—Antecedent to written literature a great storehouse of popular thought, feeling and imagination which we call mythology. The process by which this is developed, accumulated and handed down from generation to generation. Value of the product as a condensed and refined result of long ages of human life. Compare in value with great literary masterpieces produced by individual geniuses.

Vitality of mythology, due to the closeness of primitive man to Nature and the simple things of human life. Evidence in the spontaneous metaphorical character of all early language: Illustrations.

The truth in mythology, due to a sound reaction on the world. Contrast the truth of incident with the truth of character. Aristotle’s view of poetry as truer than history. The true and the false fairy-tale: a mere jumble of adventure contrasted with a portrayal of character naturally unfolding in relation to circumstance and law.

Universality of mythology. The few, great, simple elements that make up human life in all times and places. Tendency to hark back to these from the conventions and artificialities of civilization. Constant expression of these in primitive art: compare the Brunhild story. Thus ethical depth in all the gathered-up result of early life. Simple but clear recognition of the great laws of life.

Natural but inevitable art in the great expressions of early life. Characteristics of that art in comparison with the form of later masterpieces.

The ethical value of mythology.—The moral plane of primitive life in comparison with later civilization. Thus elements in mythology below the level of our ethical standards of to-day. Yet moral development proceeding not only from the lower to the higher, but from the simple to the complex. Compare the complication of ethical situations and standards in our life. Difficulty in distinguishing good and evil. Expression of this in Ibsen and Goethe. Contrasting simplicity of primitive mythology: its simple and clear opposition of good and evil. Usual representation of good as conquering. Illustrations in both Greek and northern legends. Thus mythology presenting the basal moral principles that should be clearly recognized before the literature is studied that portrays the ethical subtleties and complications of modern life.

A further ethical element in primitive mythology: good not always conquering; but when defeated, going down with colors flying, thus making of defeat the noblest of moral victories. Compare in the Prometheus legend; the story of Beowulf.

The relation of mythology to later art.—The need of the late artist to saturate himself in the springs of the race life: compare in Tennyson and Wagner. The use of mythology and religion in Greek sculpture; Renaissance painting; poetry; music.

Important types of primitive material.—The three sources of early material drawn from most largely by European art: (1) Hebraic stories; (2) Greek and Latin mythology; (3) Norse legends. The complementary character of these three bodies of material. The Hebraic stories as presenting the deepest recognition of moral law and purpose. Greek mythology as beautiful and artistic. Norse stories as most deeply human and at the same time the ethnic background from which our art springs.

Thus the value of primitive mythology and religion: (1) as sources of later art; (2) as inspiration of art to-day; (3) as valuable permanently in education.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Art rests upon a kind of religious sense: it is deeply and ineradicably in earnest. Thus it is that Art so willingly goes hand in hand with Religion.”

—Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, p. 174.

“The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all pagan mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible powers visibly seen at work in the world round him. This, I should say, is more sincerely done in the Scandinavian than in any mythology I know. Sincerity is the great character of it. Superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for the total want of old Grecian grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that these old northmen were looking into nature with open eye and soul most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way.”

—Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship, p. 30.

“When imagination incessantly escapes from reality, and does not abandon the simplicity of nature in its wanderings: then and then only the mind and the senses, the receptive force and the plastic force, are developed in that happy equilibrium which is the soul of the beautiful and the condition of humanity.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 106.

“The law of simplicity and naïvety holds good of all fine art; for it is quite possible to be at once simple and sublime.”

—Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature, p. 31.

“To speak out once for all, man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 71.

“Ah!—if you would and could but hear and see our true Freischütz,—you might feel the anxiety that now oppresses me, in the form of a friendly appreciation on your own part of the peculiarity of that spiritual life, which belongs to the German nation as a birthright; you would look kindly upon the silent attraction that draws the German away from the life of his large cities,—wretched and clumsily imitative of foreign influences, as it is,—and takes him back to nature; attracts him to the solitude of the forests, that he may there re-awaken those emotions for which your language has not even a word,—but which those mystic, clear tones of our Weber explain to us as thoroughly as your exquisite decorations and enervating music must make them lifeless and irrecognizable for you.”

—Wagner, in “Der Freischütz in Paris,” Art Life and Theories, pp. 106, 107.

“You remember the fancy of Plato’s, of a man who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was brought on a sudden into the upper air to see the sun rise. What would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight, he would discern it well to be godlike, his soul would fall down in worship before it. Now, just such a childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. The first pagan thinker among rude men, the first man that began to think, was precisely this child-man of Plato’s. Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and strength of a man. Nature had as yet no name to him; he had not yet united under a name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes and motions, which we now collectively name universe, nature, or the like,—and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing-in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the thinker and prophet it forever is, preter-natural. This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;—that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the wind sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays; mere words. We call that fire of the black thunder cloud “electricity,” and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk; but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.”

—Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship, pp. 7, 8.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. Compare, in ethical vitality and artistic beauty, primitive mythology and later masterpieces.

2. To what extent do the different arts depend upon primitive mythology and religion as sources for their material?

3. What is the relative value, for the understanding of European art, of Greek and Norse mythology?

4. Compare, in ethical vitality and artistic beauty, Tennyson’s Passing of Arthur and the concluding portion of Beowulf.

5. Why is the late artist led so frequently to saturate himself with the expressions of early life?

6. What is the relative ethical value of Hebrew stories and Norse myths?

7. From what early sources does Renaissance painting chiefly draw?

8. Compare the ethical plane in Greek and Norse mythology with that achieved in later civilization.

9. From what historic sources does English poetry chiefly draw?

10. What is the value of primitive mythology for the education of children?

REFERENCES

Anderson, Norse Mythology; The Younger Edda. Brown, The Fine Arts. Bulfinch, The Age of Chivalry; The Age of Fable. Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity. Cox, Introduction to the Science of Comparative Mythology; The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. Donaldson, Theatre of the Greeks. Fairbanks, The Mythology of Greece and Rome. Gayley, Classic Myths in English Literature. Goldziher, Mythology among the Hebrews. Grosse, The Beginnings of Art. Guerber, Myths of Greece and Rome; Myths of Northern Lands. Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry; Handbook of Poetics. Mabie, Short Studies in Literature. Malory, Le Morte Darthur. Parry, The Evolution of the Art of Music. Posnett, Comparative Literature. Shairp, Poetic Interpretation of Nature. Wagner, Art Life and Theories of.

III. THE RACE, THE EPOCH AND THE
INDIVIDUAL IN ART

“We live in this world only that we may go onward without ceasing, a peculiar help in this direction being that one enlightens the other by communicating his ideas; in the sciences and fine arts there is always more to learn.”

—Mozart, in Kerst, Mozart: The Man and the Artist, p. 89.

Determining forces behind art.—So far we have considered the great common sources of art; now to turn to the causes giving unique characteristics to each work of art.

The personal element.—In art the great common basis of human life expressed only through the medium of personality; thus the character and experience of the artist always revealed in the work, and molding it. Compare Mozart and Beethoven in music; Fra Angelico and Fra Lippo Lippi in painting.

Compare Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar and Browning’s Epilogue to Asolando. Differences in imagery, music, type of thought and feeling, general view of life. Yet these two poems coming from the same time and race. Complete revelation of Tennyson and Browning in these fragments.

Relation of the material given in biography to the self-confession in art. Compare the revelation of Andrea del Sarto in the traditional biography and in his painting. The expression of Chopin’s personality and experience in his music. Revelation of the artist even when the work is most objective and dramatic in character. Compare how it is possible to find Shakespeare behind his dramas.

The development of the artist revealed where works come from different periods of his life. Illustrations in Goethe, Wagner, Shakespeare; in the early and late Pietà of Michael Angelo.

The epoch.—The forces of the time always molding the spirit of the individual artist. The epoch a complex of many forces, yet out of them a true “time-spirit” created. Effect of internal changes in a land; of the reception of foreign stimulus; of the natural growth and decay of the forces of life.

Different types of epoch: in production and preparation, faith and doubt, creation and criticism. The artist inevitably influenced by the spirit of the age, whether conscious of the fact or not. The two contrasting types of relation the artist may sustain to his time. Compare Emerson in relation to America’s civilization; Fra Angelico as an expression of the Renaissance. So compare Dante as a voice of the middle ages; Leonardo da Vinci in relation to the Renaissance. The common spirit in the Elizabethan dramatists. Wagner’s operas as an embodiment of modern life. Significance of the two dominant motives in modern painting.

Possible further to trace the development of an epoch through the art in which it is expressed. The half-circle through which every productive epoch tends to pass. This due to the birth, maturing and decay of the forces influencing life. Contrasting tendencies in the artists appearing on the upward and on the downward slope. Illustrations in Elizabethan drama and Renaissance painting.

The race.—The epoch but a moment in the life of a people. As the time-spirit finds varying expression in the different artists in which it is clothed, so the deeper, organic life of a race as beneath all the epochs characterizing its unfolding. Evidence in the fact that each race is apt to find its highest expression in one art. Compare sculpture in Greece; painting in Italy; music in Germany; the drama in England. Similarly every expression of a race revealing its spirit. Compare the coloring in Dutch and Italian painting; nature-imagery in English and Italian poetry.

Possible also to trace the development of a race through its artistic expression. The life of a race as comparable to a great on-flowing stream with rise and fall, ever deepening and enlarging as the race develops. Compare in the development of English literature. Elements which persist under all the changes. Compare Tennyson’s Passing of Arthur and the closing portion of Beowulf.

Thus the least fragment of art embodying the spirit of the artist, the deeper life of the epoch, the still more fundamental characteristics of the race, while beneath all are the great, universal tendencies of humanity.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“The most profound erudition is no more akin to genius than a collection of dried plants is like Nature, with its constant flow of new life, ever fresh, ever young, ever changing. There are no two things more opposed than the childish naïvety of an ancient author and the learning of his commentator.”

—Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature, p. 52.

“At a distance we only hear of the first artists, and then we are often contented with names only; but when we draw nearer to this starry sky, and the luminaries of the second and third magnitude also begin to twinkle, each one coming forward and occupying his proper place in the whole constellation, then the world becomes wide, and art becomes rich.”

—Goethe, Travels in Italy, p. 36.

“I carry my thoughts about me for a long time, often a very long time, before I write them down; meanwhile my memory is so faithful that I am sure never to forget, not even in years, a theme that has once occurred to me. I change many things, discard, and try again until I am satisfied. Then, however, there begins in my head the development in every direction, and, inasmuch as I know exactly what I want, the fundamental idea never deserts me,—it arises before me, grows,—I see and hear the picture in all its extent and dimensions stand before my mind like a cast, and there remains for me nothing but the labor of writing it down, which is quickly accomplished when I have the time, for I sometimes take up other work, but never to the confusion of one with the other. You will ask me where I get my ideas. That I can not tell you with certainty; they come unsummoned, directly, indirectly,—I could seize them with my hands,—out in the open air; in the woods; while walking; in the silence of the nights; early in the morning; incited by moods, which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.”

—Beethoven, in Kerst, Beethoven: The Man and the Artist, p. 29.

“Art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself boldly above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science are enlarged.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, pp. 27, 28.

“People always fancy that we must become old to become wise; but, in truth, as years advance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we were. Man becomes, indeed, in the different stages of his life, a different being; but he cannot say that he is a better one, and, in certain matters, he is as likely to be right in his twentieth, as in his sixtieth year.

“We see the world one way from a plain, another way from the heights of a promontory, another from the glacier fields of the primary mountains. We see, from one of these points, a larger piece of the world than from the other; but that is all, and we cannot say that we see more truly from any one than from the rest. When a writer leaves monuments on the different steps of his life, it is chiefly important that he should have an innate foundation and goodwill; that he should, at each step, have seen and felt clearly, and that, without any secondary aims, he should have said distinctly and truly what has passed in his mind. Then will his writings, if they were right at the step where they originated, remain always right, however the writer may develop or alter himself in after times.”

—Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann and Soret, p. 512.

“That which distinguishes genius, and should be the standard for judging it, is the height to which it is able to soar when it is in the proper mood and finds a fitting occasion—a height always out of the reach of ordinary talent.”

—Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature, p. 88.

“It seems as though purely human feeling, grown stronger by its very repression on the side of conventional civilization, had sought out a means of bringing into use some laws of language peculiar to itself, by means of which it could express itself intelligibly, freed from the trammels of logical rules of thought. The extraordinary popularity of music in our age, the ever-increasing participation (extending through all classes of society) in the production of music of the deepest character, the growing desire to make of musical culture a necessary part of every education,—all these things which are certainly obvious and undeniable, distinctly prove the justice of the assumption that a deep-rooted and earnest need of humanity finds expression in modern musical development; and that music, unintelligible as its language is when tried by the laws of logic, must bear within it a more convincing means of making itself understood, than even those laws contain.”

—Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” Art Life and Theories, p. 159.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. What different types of relationship may artists sustain to the world in which they live?

2. Show how Tennyson and Browning are revealed respectively in Crossing the Bar and the Epilogue to Asolando.

3. Compare Michael Angelo’s two interpretations of the same theme at opposite ends of his artistic career: the Pietà of St. Peter’s in Rome, and the Pietà of the Cathedral in Florence.

4. Compare English and Italian poetry in nature-imagery.

5. What relation does landscape painting sustain to the spirit of our time?

6. In what ways are the tendencies of modern civilization expressed in Wagner’s operas?

7. Through what type of movement does a creative period tend to pass, and why?

8. What relation does sculpture sustain to the other arts in Greece?

9. What makes the Elizabethan drama the best expression of Anglo-Saxon genius?

10. Show how the development of a race may be traced through its artistic expressions.

11. Show the common racial tendencies in Tennyson’s Passing of Arthur and the closing portion of Beowulf.

REFERENCES

Bascom, Philosophy of English Literature. Carlyle, The Hero as Divinity. Carpenter, Angels’ Wings. Crawshaw, Literary Interpretation of Life. Engel, Introduction to the Study of National Music. Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann; Travels in Italy. Hugo, William Shakespeare. Kerst, Beethoven; Mozart. Lanier, Music and Poetry. Leighton, Addresses. Mabie, Books and Culture; Short Studies in Literature. Mach, Greek Sculpture. Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art. Palgrave, Golden Treasury. Partridge, Art for America. Posnett, Comparative Literature. Ruskin, The Two Paths. Schiller, Essays. Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature. Sturgis, The Appreciation of Pictures; The Appreciation of Sculpture. Taine, Lectures on Art. Van Dyke, The Meaning of Pictures. Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books. Wagner, Art Life and Theories of; Beethoven. Warner, The Relation of Literature to Life. Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism. Witt, How to Look at Pictures.

IV. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF
SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

“If you know how to describe and write down the appearance of the forms, the painter can make them so that they appear enlivened with lights and shadows which create the very expression of the faces; herein you cannot attain with the pen where he attains with the brush.”

—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, p. 159.

Differences among the arts.—Each fine art possessing its distinctive line of appeal. This evidenced in the fact that it is rare to find an artist, practising one, adequately appreciating others. Tendency in artist and student alike to see the one art from within and appreciate its significance, the others from without and perceive their limitations. Evil of this. Great need that the artist should saturate himself with the material of other arts than his own. Thus need to see broadly and impersonally the meaning and function of each art in relation to the spirit of man and in relation to the other arts expressing the same universal basis.

The three questions: (1) What of the whole content of the human spirit does the particular art express? (2) What is the means and method of its expression? (3) What are its limitations?

Method of answering: not by philosophic theory, but by an open study of works of art in each field. A little first-hand study of art better worth while than much reading of criticism.

The fact of the permanence of a particular art proving that it expresses or interprets some aspect of man’s spirit better or more easily than any other. Compare, otherwise the art would not persist except as novelty. Note the rise and subsidence of certain arts historically. The reasons why mosaic work has lost the place it occupied in the days when Ravenna’s churches were being adorned. Compare changes in fresco painting. Significance of the permanence of sculpture, painting, poetry and music.

Characteristics of sculpture.—The Venus de Milo as a representative work of ancient art. What is given in this statue? Character of the conception embodied. Method by which it is expressed. Effect on the beholder of the color of the marble and of the beauty of technical execution. The deeper feelings one has in the presence of the statue. Significance that these emotions vary with different individuals; yet, the conception, if understood, entirely definite and embodied in defined, permanent form. Thus the conception given, the emotions, relatively speaking, associated.

The Hermes of Praxiteles and the three Goddesses of the Parthenon. What these express in idea and execution. Causes of the feelings they tend to arouse in the beholder. Difference in the ancient and modern feeling associated with such a statue as the Amazon of the Villa Mattei.

Michael Angelo’s statues on the Medicean tombs. Comparison with Greek sculpture in conception, execution and associated emotions.

Modern work in the field of sculpture analyzed. The Joan of Arc of Chapu; other characteristic work in the Luxembourg gallery. Max Klinger’s Salome.

Transition from sculpture to painting through relief-work. The Nymph and Infant Bacchus; the bronze doors of Ghiberti.

Painting.—The Pompeian frescoes as painting in its nearest approach to sculpture. These as presenting human figures, simply treated, with slight background. Less complete and realistic form than in sculpture; but vastly increased scope in both breadth and depth. Effect of the much greater use of color.

Michael Angelo’s Creation of Adam; his Last Judgment. Difference in feelings aroused by the latter work in accordance with the training and belief of the beholder.

Raphael’s Sistine Madonna: the conception given; method by which expressed. Direct emotional effect of the color used and of the grace and beauty of execution.

Characteristics of a Corot landscape: what we feel in the presence of it as compared with what the Greeks might have felt. The interpretation of humanity in modern art: compare in Millet, Bastien-Lepage, Cormon. Relation of conception to emotion in such work; contrast with the painting of the Italian Renaissance.

Summary.—What sculpture and painting are alike capable of giving definitely. Elements common to both in method. Differences between them. What neither is capable of achieving. Why sculpture was the characteristic art of the ancient Greeks, painting of the Renaissance Italians.

All art appealing immediately to the senses; danger if it stops there. The true appeal through the senses to the soul. Thus how art may degenerate and become dangerous. The problem of Faust’s vision in the mirror.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding may most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second inasmuch as it acquires its importance from the fact that it hears the things which the eye has seen. If you historians, or poets, or mathematicians had never seen things with your eyes you would be ill able to describe them in your writings. And if you, O poet, represent a story by depicting it with your pen, the painter with his brush will so render it as to be more easily satisfying and less tedious to understand. If you call painting ‘dumb poetry,’ then the painter may say of the poet that his art is ‘blind painting.’ Consider then which is the more grievous affliction, to be blind or be dumb! Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings, for while poetry attempts with words to represent forms, actions, and scenes, the painter employs the exact images of the forms in order to reproduce these forms. Consider, then, which is more fundamental to man, the name of man or his image? The name changes with change of country; the form is unchanged except by death.”

—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, pp. 156, 157.

“If the artist, out of ever-varying nature, can only make use of a single moment, and the painter especially can only use this moment from one point of view, whilst their works are intended to stand the test not only of a passing glance, but of long and repeated contemplation, it is clear that this moment, and the point from which this moment is viewed, cannot be chosen with too great a regard to results. Now that only is a happy choice which allows the imagination free scope. The longer we gaze, the more must our imagination add; and the more our imagination adds, the more we must believe we see. In the whole course of an emotion there is no moment which possesses this advantage so little as its highest stage. There is nothing beyond this; and the presentation of extremes to the eye clips the wings of fancy, prevents her from soaring beyond the impression of the senses, and compels her to occupy herself with weaker images; further than these she ventures not, but shrinks from the visible fulness of expression as her limit. Thus, if Laokoön sighs, the imagination can hear him shriek; but if he shrieks, it can neither rise a step higher above nor descend a step below this representation, without seeing him in a condition which, as it will be more endurable, becomes less interesting. It either hears him merely moaning, or sees him already dead.

“Furthermore, this single moment receives through art an unchangeable duration; therefore it must not express anything, of which we can think only as transitory. All appearances, to whose very being, according to our ideas, it is essential that they suddenly break forth and as suddenly vanish, that they can be what they are but for a moment,—all such appearances, be they pleasing or be they horrible, receive, through the prolongation which art gives them, such an unnatural character, that at every repeated glance the impression they make grows weaker and weaker, and at last fills us with dislike or disgust of the whole object.”

—Lessing, Laokoön, pp. 19, 20.

“It is neither charm nor is it dignity which speaks from the glorious face of the Juno Ludovici; it is neither of these, for it is both at once. While the female god challenges our veneration, the godlike woman at the same time kindles our love. But while in ecstacy we give ourselves up to the heavenly beauty, the heavenly self-repose awes us back. The whole form rests and dwells in itself—a fully complete creation in itself—and as if she were out of space, without advance or resistance; it shows no force contending with force, no opening through which time could break in. Irresistibly carried away and attracted by her womanly charm, kept off at a distance by her godly dignity, we also find ourselves at length in the state of the greatest repose, and the result is a wonderful impression, for which the understanding has no idea and language no name.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 72.

“As practising myself the art of sculpture no less than that of painting, and doing both the one and the other in the same degree, it seems to me that without suspicion of unfairness I may venture to give an opinion as to which of the two is the more intellectual, and of the greater difficulty and perfection. In the first place sculpture is dependent on certain lights, namely those from above, while a picture carries everywhere with it its own light and shade; light and shade therefore are essential to sculpture. In this respect the sculptor is aided by the nature of the relief which produces these of its own accord, but the painter artificially creates them by his art in places where nature would normally do the like. The sculptor cannot render the difference in the varying natures of the colours of objects; painting does not fail to do so in any particular. The lines of perspective of sculptors do not seem in any way true; those of painters may appear to extend a hundred miles beyond the work itself.”

—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, pp. 160, 161.

“What the artist does or has done excites in us the mood in which he himself was when he did it. A free mood in the artist makes us free; a constrained one makes us uncomfortable. We usually find this freedom of the artist where he is fully equal to his subject. It is on this account we are so pleased with Dutch pictures; the artists painted the life around them, of which they were perfect masters. If we are to feel this freedom of mind in an actor, he must, by study, imagination, and natural disposition, be perfect master of his part, must have all bodily requisites at his command, and must be upheld by a certain youthful energy. But study is not enough without imagination, and study and imagination together are not enough without natural disposition. Women do the most through imagination and temperament.”

—Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann and Soret, pp. 417, 418.

“If you would have me speak only of panel painting I am content to give an opinion between it and sculpture by saying that painting is more beautiful, more imaginative, and richer in resource, while sculpture is more enduring, but excels in nothing else. Sculpture reveals what it is with little effort; painting seems a thing miraculous, making things intangible appear tangible, presenting in relief things which are flat, in distance things near at hand. In fact painting is adorned with infinite possibilities of which sculpture can make no use.”

—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, p. 162.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. What peculiar excellences has sculpture that are shown by no other art?

2. What special excellences has painting that are shown by no other art?

3. What cannot be directly or adequately expressed in sculpture? In painting?

4. Compare in conception, execution and associated emotions Andrea del Sarto’s and Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper.

5. What effect has the color and texture of marble upon the emotions?

6. Analyze carefully the effect of Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment upon your senses, intellect and emotions.

7. Compare carefully, in the effect upon the beholder, the Venus de Milo, Michael Angelo’s Pietà (in St. Peter’s) and Chapu’s Joan of Arc.

8. Study the relation of significance to beauty in Raphael’s Sistine Madonna and Millet’s Sower.

9. What is the significance for the function of sculpture and painting that in both arts form is statical and relatively permanent?

10. Study the respective effects of form and color in sculpture; in painting.

REFERENCES

Brown, The Fine Arts. Caffin, How to Study Pictures. Goethe, Travels in Italy. Holden, Audiences. Knight, The Philosophy of the Beautiful. LaFarge, Considerations on Painting. Leighton, Addresses. Lessing, Laokoön. Mach, Greek Sculpture. Noyes, The Enjoyment of Art. Palgrave, Poetry Compared with the Other Fine Arts. Parry, The Ministry of Fine Art to the Happiness of Life. Puffer, The Psychology of Beauty, chapter iv. Raymond, Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as Representative Arts. Ruskin, Aratra Pentelici; Lectures on Art; Modern Painters. Sturgis, The Appreciation of Pictures; The Appreciation of Sculpture. Van Dyke, Art for Art’s Sake; How to Judge of a Picture; The Meaning of Pictures; Principles of Art. Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books; Treatise on Painting. Witt, How to Look at Pictures.

V. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF
MUSIC

“Continue to translate yourself to the heaven of art; there is no more undisturbed, unmixed, purer happiness than may thus be attained.”

—Beethoven, in Kerst, Beethoven: The Man and the Artist, p. 12.

The art of music.—Music the most difficult of the arts to define in function and meaning, because the most subtle, seeming to produce its effects as by a miracle.

The relation of music to Nature. The sounds utilized in music all found in the natural world. Compare the effect of the wind sighing in the pine-trees; bird songs; the rhythmic beat of waves upon the shore. Yet music not often directly imitating nature as do sculpture and painting. Music resolving natural forms into their elements and then recombining these independently. Thus music accomplishing in time relations more what architecture does in space relations. Compare the use in architecture of forms given by Nature, as in the tree column or cave roof. Hence deep significance in the oft-repeated comparison of music and architecture. Architecture as “frozen music”; music as liquid architecture. Illustrate in Notre Dame de Paris; in Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

The appeal of architecture.—The effect upon the beholder of the Greek temple at Pæstum. Sensuous delight in beautiful forms and colors; conception given; emotion aroused. Contrast a mediæval temple such as Notre Dame or the cathedral at Milan. What is dominant and what subordinate in each work.

The effect of music.—The appeal in a relatively slight musical composition such as Schumann’s Arabesque (Op. 18) or Chopin’s Impromptu (Op. 29). Type of sensuous pleasure as compared with the other arts. The dynamic series of forms arousing a series of emotional states. The reflections associated with these states of feeling. Thus the two-fold contrast between music and the arts dealing with space relations: (1) What is dominant in the one, associated or subordinate in the other; (2) In the one form dynamic and evanescent, in the other statical and relatively permanent.

The direct intellectual element in analyzing the composition: compare the study of motives and harmony. Relation of this to the immediate response to the appeal of art. Intellectual analysis possible in relation to all the arts; yet while this may lead to deepened appreciation, standing somewhat aside from the response to the art itself.

Fuller illustration of the line of appeal of music in the best of Chopin’s Nocturnes and the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven. What is given in each of these works. The means by which the effect is attained.

The unique sphere of music.—Significance that music must be recreated every time it is enjoyed. Forms in music successive in a dynamic series, each element dying in the same moment in which it is created. Thus sublimation of form in music and the freeing of the content from sensuous association.

Possibility of expressing for the emotions what cannot be represented for the imagination. Note, possible to conceive God, an immaterial soul, a transcendent heaven; but impossible to carve or paint these. Power of music to express or awaken the emotions we associate with the conceptions of the transcendent, the supernatural and the divine. True sense in which music is the one art “capable of revealing the infinite.” Browning’s illustration of this in Abt Vogler.

Music as the most personal of the fine arts in expressing emotions no other art can adequately embody; at the same time music the most social of the fine arts in arousing the feelings that unite men, where intellectual opinions and convictions tend to separate them. Illustration in the Ouverture to Tannhäuser.

The obvious reason why it is so much more difficult to put music into intellectual terms than is true of the other arts. Various attempts to associate a definite series of intellectual conceptions with the sensuous and emotional appeal of music. Compare in naming compositions; in “program music”; in interpretations. Rigid limits to these attempts.

Composite arts.—The reasons why music lends itself so readily to combination with other arts. The song: its appeal as compared with music unassociated with words. Church music and its development.

The opera as a peculiarly characteristic composite modern art. Elements composing it; the question as to which should be central. The value of Wagner’s answer.

The cultural value of music.—Peculiar danger in music since it may arouse emotional sensibility without directing its expression. Plato’s view. The effect of merely sensuous music. The need to choose your companions wisely in hearing even great music.

Yet the danger in music merely the corollary of its peculiar strength and power. Supreme value of its refining and exalting influence. Its high significance for our time, indeed for the human spirit in all time.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“And indeed the greatness of the poet may be best measured by that concerning which he is silent, in order to let the unspeakable itself speak to us silently. It is only the musician who can bring this that is silent into clear expression; and the unerring form of his loud-resounding silence is endless melody!”

—Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” Art Life and Theories, p. 180.

“The more definitely a composer aims at making his music an expression of emotion, the more firmly must he fashion it according to the dictates of intellect, for were he to attempt emotional expression without preserving the supremacy of the reason in his work, he would speedily fall into formlessness, and instead of enlightening would merely bewilder his hearers. In all art creative, or interpretative, the emotion must be under the dominance of the reason, or else there is no method, and art without method is inconceivable.”

—Henderson, What is Good Music, p. 98.

“What instrumental music is unable to achieve, lies also beyond the pale of music proper; for it alone is pure and self-subsistent music. No matter whether we regard vocal music as superior to, or more effective than instrumental music—an unscientific proceeding, by the way, which is generally the upshot of one-sided dilettantism—we can not help admitting that the term ‘music,’ in its true meaning, must exclude compositions in which words are set to music. In vocal or operatic music it is impossible to draw so nice a distinction between the effect of the music, and that of the words, that an exact definition of the share which each has had in the production of the whole becomes practicable. An enquiry into the subject of music must leave out even compositions with inscriptions, or so-called programme-music. Its union with poetry, though enhancing the power of music, does not widen its limits.”

—Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music, pp. 44, 45.

“How, ye formal philosophers, ye men of the ‘sounding arabesque,’ unto whom the spirit shows itself not, because ye do not believe in it, or search after it in the organic structure with the gross scalpel of the anatomist—know ye not that Goethe’s ‘disengaging one’s self from a mood,’ which he found in poetry, also applies to the musician—that every truly artistic tone-work is also an ‘occasional poem’? Surely, no musical thought has ever been generated with vital power in your soul, or, if you had one, it was a greenhouse plant. Otherwise you would know, that the artist hastens with everything that delights and pains him to his beloved art, and desires of it that it should preserve each mood for him in the sacred vessel of its beautiful form for all time.”

—Ambros, The Boundaries of Music and Poetry, p. 106.

“While sound in speech is but a sign, that is, a means for the purpose of expressing something which is quite distinct from its medium; sound in music is the end, that is, the ultimate and absolute object in view. The intrinsic beauty of the musical forms in the latter case, and the exclusive dominion of thought over sound as a mere medium of expression, in the former, are so utterly distinct as to render the union of these two elements a logical impossibility.”

—Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music, p. 94.

“Let us establish first of all the fact that the one true form of music is melody; that without melody music is inconceivable, and that music and melody are inseparable. That a piece of music has no melody, can therefore only mean that the musician has not attained to the real formation of an effective form, that can have a decisive influence upon the feelings; which simply shows the absence of talent in the composer.”

—Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” Art Life and Theories, p. 175.

“In its ideal feature music keeps within its natural boundaries, so long as it does not undertake to go beyond its expressional capacity—that is, so long as the poetical thought of the composer becomes intelligible from the moods called forth by his work and the train of ideas stimulated thereby, that is, from the composition itself, and so long as nothing foreign, not organically connected with the music itself, must be dragged in, in order to assist comprehension.”

—Ambros, The Boundaries of Music and Poetry, pp. 181, 182.

“It must be in music, that language intelligible to all men, that the great equalizing power is to be found, which, converting the language of ideas into the language of the feelings, would bring the deepest secrets of the artistic conception to general comprehension, especially if this comprehension can be made distinct through the plastic expression of dramatic representation,—can be given such a distinctness as up to this time painting alone has been able to claim as its peculiar influence.”

—Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” Art Life and Theories, p. 141.

“In opera, willy-nilly, poetry must be the obedient daughter of music. Why do Italian operas please everywhere, even in Paris, as I have been a witness, despite the wretchedness of their librettos? Because in them music rules and compels us to forget everything else. All the more must an opera please in which the plot is well carried out, and the words are written simply for the sake of the music and not here and there to please some miserable rhyme, which, God knows, adds nothing to a theatrical representation but more often harms it. Verses are the most indispensable thing in music, but rhymes, for the sake of rhymes, the most injurious. Those who go to work so pedantically will assuredly come to grief along with the music. It were best if a good composer, who understands the stage, and is himself able to suggest something, and a clever poet could be united in one, like a phœnix.”

—Mozart, in Kerst, Mozart: The Man and the Artist, p. 28.

“That which so strongly attracted our great poets towards music was the fact that it was at the same time the purest form and the most sensuous realization of that form. The abstract arithmetical number, the mathematical figure, meets us here as a creation having an irresistible influence upon the emotions—that is, it appears as melody; and this can be as unerringly established, so as to produce sensuous effect, as the poetic diction of written language, on the contrary, is abandoned to every whim in the personal character of the person reciting it. What was not practically possible for Shakespeare—to be himself the actor of each one of his rôles—is practicable for the musical composer, and this with great definiteness,—since he speaks to us directly through each one of the musicians who execute his works. In this case the transmigration of the poet’s soul into the body of the performer takes place according to the infallible laws of the most positive technique; and the composer who gives the correct measure for a technically right performance of his work, becomes completely one with the musician who performs it, to an extent that can at most only be affirmed of the constructive artist in regard to a work which he had himself produced in color or stone,—if, indeed, a transmigration of his soul into lifeless matter is a supposable case.”

—Wagner, in “The Purpose of the Opera,” Art Life and Theories, pp. 226, 227.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. What relation has the art of music to the sounds given in the natural world?

2. Choose two musical compositions you know well and analyze in detail the effect they produce upon you and the means by which the effect is produced.

3. What element in music corresponds in any degree to color in painting?

4. Compare carefully the art of music in dealing with time relations with architecture in dealing with space relations.

5. Compare what is dominant in the appeal of music with what is dominant in the appeal of sculpture and painting.

6. What results from the fact that in music form is dynamic and evanescent, while in sculpture and painting it is statical and relatively permanent?

7. What may be said to be the intellectual element in music?

8. Compare what is given in Gounod’s music to Faust with what is given in a series of paintings dealing with the Faust story.

9. Is the effect good or bad of merely sensuously enjoying slight music?

10. Compare the cultural value of music with that of sculpture and painting.

REFERENCES

Ambros, Boundaries of Music and Poetry. Browning, Abt Vogler; With Charles Avison; Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha; Saul. Carpenter, Angels’ Wings. Davies, The Musical Consciousness. Dwight, Intellectual Influence of Music; Music as a Means of Culture. Eastman, Musical Education and Musical Art. Goddard, Reflections upon Musical Art. Gurney, The Power of Sound. Hanchett, The Art of the Musician. Hand, Æsthetics of Musical Art. Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music. Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone. Henderson, What is Good Music? Holden, Audiences. Kerst, Beethoven; Mozart. Knight, The Philosophy of the Beautiful. Kobbé, How to Appreciate Music. Krehbiel, How to Listen to Music. Kufferath, Rhythm, Melody and Harmony. Lanier, Music and Poetry. Mathews, How to Understand Music; Music: Its Ideals and Methods. Norton, The Intellectual Element in Music. Palgrave, Poetry Compared with the Other Fine Arts. Parry, The Evolution of the Art of Music. Plato, Republic (books II and III). Puffer, The Psychology of Beauty, chapter v. Raymond, Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music. Ritter, Music in Its Relation to Intellectual Life. Saint-Saëns, The Nature and Object of Music. Schopenhauer, On the Metaphysics of Music. Spencer, The Origin and Function of Music. Surette and Mason, The Appreciation of Music. Wagner, Art Life and Theories of; Beethoven.

VI. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF
POETRY

“Form without substance is a shadow of riches, and all possible cleverness in expression is of no use to him who has nothing to express.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 239.

The nature of poetry.—Poetry as the highest and most characteristic form of literature. Bewildering wealth of material in this art and most many-sided relation to the spirit of man. Hence difficulty in defining function.

Poetry in relation to sculpture and painting.—Possibility in poetry of expressing definite conceptions for the intellect and imagination. Compare Shelley’s Ozymandias of Egypt. What is given in this sonnet: compare a statue. Less immediate portrayal for the vision in poetry. Hence less direct power in appeal to the imagination; but conceptions freed more from sense association. Moreover ideas expressed through a succession of forms in time relation.

Power of poetry to paint a picture: compare Wordsworth’s sonnet Upon Westminster Bridge. Contrast in appeal with a painting of the same scene. The ways in which each art has its own superiority. Truth and error in Lessing’s theory of descriptive poetry as developed in Laokoön.

Poetry in relation to music.—Direct musical appeal in the two sonnets studied. Direct expression of emotion and appeal to emotion in poetry. Compare Shelley’s lyric To the Night. Here music dominant, appealing to the emotions, as in Ozymandias thought and imagination appealing to inner vision. How all poetry should be read aloud. Even when read silently, appeal to the ear in music through the imagination. The effect of poetry read aloud in a language the hearer does not know: direct appeal of music in poetry even when the ideas are not given at all. Thus poetry making a direct appeal to the emotions through music, though with less absoluteness than in music and without in any way usurping or replacing the functions of the latter art.

Byron’s stanzas on the sunset hour in Don Juan. What they give in natural beauty; association of the human past, of religion and of literature; personal experience. Compare what is given in Millet’s Angelus; in a musical composition awakening the same emotions.

The two types of poetry.—Poetry that is dominantly musical in appeal. Compare many lyrics of Shelley; Spenser. The description of the dwelling of Morpheus in The Faery Queen. Poetry in which the dominant appeal is through imaginative vision. Compare what is most characteristic in Dante and Shakespeare.

Relation of poetry to human life.—Poetry combining in a new union the functions of the other arts without replacing them in their own fields. Poetry the most complex and universal of the fine arts in many-sided power to express and interpret all aspects of human experience. Compare in the lyric; the epic; the drama.

Prose literature in relation to poetry. The same functions fulfilled on another plane. The rhythm of prose. The novel as a prose epic and drama set in a lower key.

The three types of art in relation.—The different functions of the arts illustrated in great masterpieces. Compare Dante’s Divine Comedy with the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo and a mediæval cathedral, and with a fugue of Bach and a symphony of Beethoven.

Compare Cormon’s Cain, Wagner’s music in The Twilight of the Gods, and Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Compare Watts’ painting of Francesca and Paolo, Wagner’s music in Tristan und Isolde, and the fifth canto of Dante’s Inferno.

Unity in the arts.—The spirit of man a unity, hence also the appeal of the arts. In all, thought, emotion and imagination; in all, the same principles of form, of beauty and harmony.

This evident in efforts to combine the arts in a more composite art. Compare the union of poetry and music in song; the union of all types of art in the Wagnerian opera. Inevitable sacrifice of something on the part of each of the arts so combined; peculiar adaptation of the composite art to the modern spirit. The question which art should be central in the composite whole.

The service of poetry.—Danger in poetry as in the other arts. Evil of seeking merely sensuous beauty; evil of portraying life to satisfy a morbid and decadent taste. Yet the evil but indicating the correlative power in the true ministration of art to the human spirit.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity,—I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only an euphemism for folly.”

—Plato, Republic, book III, section 400.

“I believed that I might form the theory that every individual branch of art follows out a development of its powers that finally leads it to their limits; and that it cannot pass these limits without the danger of losing itself in the unintelligible and absolutely fantastic—even in the absurd. I thought that I saw in this point the necessity for it to join companionship at this stage with another class of art, related to it, and the only one capable of going on from this position. And as I was of necessity keenly interested (having regard to my own ideal) in following out this tendency in each special kind of art, I finally believed that I could recognize it most distinctly in the relation of poetry to music,—especially considering the remarkable importance modern music has assumed. And as I thus endeavored to imagine that work of art in which all branches of art could unite in their highest perfection, I came as a matter of course to the conscious contemplation of that ideal which had unconsciously gradually formed within me, and had hovered before the seeking artist.”

—Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” Art Life and Theories, p. 147.

“If it is true that painting and poetry in their imitations make use of entirely different means or symbols—the first, namely, of form and colour in space, the second of articulated sounds in time—if these symbols indisputably require a suitable relation to the thing symbolized, then it is clear that symbols arranged in juxtaposition can only express subjects of which the wholes or parts exist in juxtaposition; while consecutive symbols can only express subjects of which the wholes or parts are themselves consecutive.

“Subjects whose wholes or parts exist in juxtaposition are called bodies. Consequently, bodies with their visible properties are the peculiar subjects of painting.

“Subjects whose wholes or parts are consecutive are called actions. Consequently, actions are the peculiar subject of poetry.

“Still, all bodies do not exist in space only, but also in time. They endure, and in each moment of their duration may assume a different appearance, or stand in a different combination. Each of these momentary appearances and combinations is the effect of a preceding one, may be the cause of a subsequent, one, and is therefore, as it were, the centre of an action. Consequently, painting too can imitate actions, but only indicatively, by means of bodies.

“On the other hand, actions cannot exist by themselves, they must depend on certain beings. So far, therefore, as these beings are bodies, or are regarded as such, poetry paints bodies, but only indicatively, by means of actions.

“In its coexisting compositions painting can only make use of a single instant of the action, and must therefore choose the one which is most pregnant, and from which what precedes and what follows can be most easily gathered.

“In like manner, poetry, in its progressive imitations, is confined to the use of a single property of bodies, and must therefore choose that which calls up the most sensible image of the body in the aspect in which she makes use of it.”

—Lessing, Laokoön, pp. 91, 92.

“As to Homer, it is as if the scales had fallen from my eyes. The descriptions, similes and so on appear to us poetical, and are yet unspeakably natural, though of course drawn with a purity, an inward truth enough to strike us poor moderns dumb. The very strangest fictions are characterised by a naturalness I never felt so much as in the presence of the objects described. To express the antithesis briefly; they presented the thing, we usually present the effect; they described the dreadful, we describe dreadfully; they the agreeable, we agreeably, and so on. This will explain all our extravagance, our affectation, our false grace, our inflation; for once you elaborate and strain after effect, you fancy you can never make it strong enough.”

—Goethe, Travels in Italy, p. 322.

“In instruments, the primal organs of creation and nature find their representation; they cannot be sharply determined and defined, for they but repeat primal feelings as they came forth from the chaos of the first creation, when there were perhaps no human beings in existence to receive them in their hearts. With the genius of the human voice it is entirely otherwise; this represents the human heart, and its isolated, individual emotion. Its character is therefore limited, but fixed and defined. Let these two elements be brought together, then; let them be united! Let those wild primal emotions that stretch out into the infinite, that are represented by instruments, be contrasted with the clear, definite emotions of the human heart, represented by the human voice. The addition of the second element will work beneficently and soothingly upon the conflict of the elemental emotions, and give to their course a well-defined and united channel; and the human heart itself, in receiving these elemental emotions, will be immeasurably strengthened and broadened; and made capable of feeling clearly what was before an uncertain presage of the highest ideal, now changed into a divine knowledge.”

—Wagner, in “A Pilgrimage to Beethoven,” Art Life and Theories, p. 63.

“I admit that the exercises of the gymnasium form athletic bodies; but beauty is only developed by the free and equal play of the limbs. In the same way the tension of the isolated spiritual forces may make extraordinary men; but it is only the well-tempered equilibrium of these forces that can produce happy and accomplished men.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 43.

“The highest problem of any art is to produce by appearance the illusion of a higher reality. But it is a false endeavour to realize the appearance until at last only something commonly real remains.”

—Goethe, Autobiography, Bohn Library translation (George Bell & Sons, London, 1891), vol. 1, p. 422.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. What likenesses can you discover between poetry on the one hand and sculpture and painting on the other?

2. What likenesses can you discover between poetry and music?

3. What poets make the strongest appeal through imaginative vision? What poets make the dominant appeal through music?

4. Compare what is given in Shakespeare’s sonnet beginning “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” with a painting of an autumn scene.

5. Compare Shelley’s lyric To the Night with the music of Chopin.

6. Study carefully what is given in Millet’s Man with the Hoe with what is given in Markham’s poem on the same subject.

7. Estimate the value and limitations of Lessing’s theory of the arts as given in Laokoön.

8. What elements of content and of form are common to all the arts?

9. Compare in expression of thought, feeling and imagination and in type of appeal, the Divine Comedy of Dante, the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo and the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven.

10. What powers has poetry that are not present in the other arts?

REFERENCES

Ambros, Boundaries of Music and Poetry. Aristotle, Poetic. Beeching, The Study of Poetry. Bradley, Poetry for Poetry’s Sake. Corson, Aims of Literary Study. Dabney, Musical Basis of Verse. Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann; Maxims and Reflections. Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry; Handbook of Poetics. Gurney, The Power of Sound. Holden, Audiences. Holmes, What is Poetry? Hugo, William Shakespeare. Knight, The Philosophy of the Beautiful. Lanier, Music and Poetry; Science of English Verse. Lessing, Laokoön. Moyse, Poetry as a Fine Art. Newman, Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle’s Poetics. Palgrave, Golden Treasury; Poetry Compared with the Other Fine Arts. Plato, Republic, books II. and III. Poe, The Rationale of Verse and The Poetic Principle. Puffer, The Psychology of Beauty, chapters vi.-viii. Raymond, Poetry as a Representative Art; Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music. Santayana, Elements and Function of Poetry. Schiller, Essays. Shairp, Aspects of Poetry. Shelley, A Defence of Poetry. Sidney, Defense of Poesy. Stedman, Nature and Elements of Poetry. Wagner, Art Life and Theories of. Wilde, The Critic as Artist. Winchester, Some Principles of Literary Criticism.

VII. LITERATURE AND LIBERAL CULTURE

“It is precisely minds of the first order that will never be specialists. For their very nature is to make the whole of existence their problem; and this is a subject upon which they will every one of them in some form provide mankind with a new revelation.”

—Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature, p. 55.

Significance of poetry for education.—Each art supreme in its own field and function. Thus impossibility of classing one as highest. Of them all, poetry the most universal in function, combining in one something of each of the great types of art, and broadest in power to express and interpret human life. Permanence of poetry. Accessibility of poetry as contrasted with the other arts. Thus whatever art appeals most powerfully to the individual, poetry having a place in the education of all. Hence reason for choosing this art for separate discussion.

What is literature?—Relation of poetry to other forms of literature. Two-fold distinction of artistic literature from other writing: Requirement that it should be human in appeal, written for the man and not the specialist, and that it should be adequate and harmonious in expression. The vast field comprised within these limits.

The study of literature.—Literature many things to many men. Thus studied for a multitude of special purposes. Compare the use of literature as a mere text-book for philology, or as an opportunity for expounding a particular philosophy. Frequent misuse of literature in education.

The great value of literature, not in contributing to some phase of special training, but in developing liberal culture. What such culture means in the development of intellect, emotions and imagination.

The reasons for the vast development of specialization in our education recently. Need that special training should rest always on a basis of liberal culture. Thus the significance of the study of literature as the art most broadly expressing human life, and thus contributing to the liberal cultivation of the man as compared with the training of the specialist.

The four avenues of approach.—Literature possessing a soul of thought, feeling and imagination and a body of artistic expression. Compare how all true art must be both significant and beautiful. Thus two great aspects of literature: possible to focus attention on either one. Which appeals more powerfully to the student as somewhat a matter of temperament.

Content and form studied directly with the aim of understanding significance and appreciating beauty; both aspects of literature studied as embodying historical forces. Thus the four aspects of the study of literature, with the aim of liberal culture.

The direct study of the content of literature.—The range of thought given in literature. The problems constantly treated. Thought never expressed alone in literature, but always transfused with feeling and transfigured with imagination. Thus the appeal to the whole man. Resulting education and its value. Compare in developing appreciation of the beauty and sublimity of Nature, of the dignity, comedy and tragedy of human life. Illustrations in the poetry of the sunset hour; in the poetry of human experience.

The second avenue of approach.—The soul of literature given a further meaning when studied in relation to the forces behind it. Expression of the character of the artist in his work: Compare Milton in Paradise Lost; Carlyle in Sartor Resartus. Embodiment of the spirit of the epoch and race in literature. Deeper expression of what is common to humanity in all time: Compare the Antigone of Sophocles.

The study of literary art.—The analytical study of form in literature as only a means to an end—the end of synthetic appreciation. The need always to find the relation of the body of art to the soul of thought, feeling and imagination expressed through it.

No accidents in art. The melody of a line or word always determined by law, whether or not the poet was conscious of the law. Possible thus for the student to discover the laws the art follows. Illustration of these in the succession of poetic forms from common speech to the most highly differentiated stanzas. The aim of art never merely to create the sensuously pleasing, but to give adequate and harmonious expression.

The fourth avenue of approach.—The body of literature as much as the soul an expression of historical forces. Evidence in the contrasting imagery of Shelley and Wordsworth. The Elizabethan age naturally creating the drama, modern life the lyric. Expression of racial characteristics in the music of words and the stanzas of poetry. Contrast Beowulf and the Iliad.

The culture given by literature.—Type of education resulting from all four lines of the study of literature. The widened relation to man and Nature. The true cosmopolitanism of the spirit. Thus the service of literature in making possible the discovery of the divine in the commonplace and of the ideal in the real.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.”

—Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature, p. 30.

“We know that the sensibility of the mind depends, as to degree, on the liveliness, and for extent on the richness, of the imagination. Now the predominance of the faculty of analysis must necessarily deprive the imagination of its warmth and energy, and a restricted sphere of objects must diminish its wealth. It is for this reason that the abstract thinker has very often a cold heart, because he analyses impressions, which only move the mind by their combination or totality; on the other hand, the man of business, the statesman, has very often a narrow heart, because shut up in the narrow circle of his employment his imagination can neither expand nor adapt itself to another manner of viewing things.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, pp. 41, 42.

“One should not study contemporaries and competitors, but the great men of antiquity, whose works have, for centuries, received equal homage and consideration. Indeed, a man of really superior endowments will feel the necessity of this, and it is just this need for an intercourse with great predecessors, which is the sign of a higher talent. Let us study Molière, let us study Shakespeare, but above all things, the old Greeks, and always the Greeks.”

—Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann and Soret, p. 236.

“There is a fine art of passion, but an impassioned fine art is a contradiction in terms, for the infallible effect of the beautiful is emancipation from the passions. The idea of an instructive fine art (didactic art) or improving (moral) art is no less contradictory, for nothing agrees less with the idea of the beautiful than to give a determinate tendency to the mind.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 92.

“To read a philosopher’s biography, instead of studying his thoughts, is like neglecting a picture and attending only to the style of its frame, debating whether it is carved well or ill, and how much it cost to gild it.”

—Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature, p. 146.

“Any one who is sufficiently young, and who is not quite spoiled, could not easily find any place that would suit him so well as a theatre. No one asks you any questions: you need not open your mouth unless you choose; on the contrary, you sit quite at your ease like a king, and let everything pass before you, and recreate your mind and senses to your heart’s content. There is poetry, there is painting, there are singing and music, there is acting, and what not besides. When all these arts, and the charm of youth and beauty heightened to an important degree, work in concert on the same evening, it is a bouquet to which no other can compare.”

—Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann and Soret, p. 120.

“It is therefore not going far enough to say that the light of the understanding only deserves respect when it reacts on the character; to a certain extent it is from the character that this light proceeds; for the road that terminates in the head must pass through the heart. Accordingly, the most pressing need of the present time is to educate the sensibility, because it is the means, not only to render efficacious in practice the improvement of ideas, but to call this improvement into existence.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 48.

“A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can.”

—John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1887), p. 32.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. Define artistic literature as distinguished from other writings.

2. What characteristics give literature an exceptional place and value as a means of liberal culture?

3. What education results from the study of thought, feeling and imagination in literature?

4. Why is the poetry of sorrow filled with the imagery of the sea?

5. Is there a “pathetic fallacy” involved in using Nature as a language for the expression of human emotions?

6. What place has the education of the emotions and the imagination in relation to the whole of culture?

7. Study the imagery of Shelley and Wordsworth as expressing the character of the two poets.

8. What is the cultural value of the analytical study of literary style?

9. Why was Elizabethan poetry characteristically dramatic, where modern English poetry is predominantly lyrical?

10. What aspects of the study of literature are most important for liberal culture, and why?

REFERENCES

Arnold, The Study of Poetry. Baldwin, The Book-Lover. Bates, Talks on the Study of Literature. Beeching, The Study of Poetry. Collins, The True Functions of Poetry. Corson, Aims of Literary Study. Crawshaw, The Interpretation of Literature; Literary Interpretation of Life. Dabney, Musical Basis of Verse. Hamerton, The Intellectual Life. Hugo, William Shakespeare. Lewes, Principles of Success in Literature. Mabie, Books and Culture. Mathews, Music: Its Ideals and Methods. Morison, The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. Newman, Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle’s Poetics. Palgrave, Golden Treasury. Pryde, Highways of Literature. Santayana, Elements and Function of Poetry. Schiller, Essays. Shairp, Poetic Interpretation of Nature. Sidney, Defense of Poesy. Stedman, Nature and Elements of Poetry. Warner, The Relation of Literature to Life. Winchester, Some Principles of Literary Criticism.

VIII. BEAUTY AND THE CULTURE OF
THE SPIRIT

“It is important, at the present time, to bear in mind that the human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real.

It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live. Would you realize the difference? Animals exist, man lives.”

—Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, p. 295.

The life of appreciation.—Art appealing to the whole man—intellect, emotion, imagination. Hence difficulty in endeavoring to put the meaning of art into terms of the intellect. How we appreciate much that we never understand. The joy of life depending largely on appreciation. Compare how life is always in advance of the theory of life. The three aspects of the life of appreciation: beauty, love, faith. The sense in which wisdom also belongs to appreciation.

Contrasting significance of art and philosophy. The reason for the permanent value of every great work of art. The test of an artistic masterpiece its power to grow with our growth, revealing new deeps as we bring the key of enlarged experience to its interpretation.

The nature of beauty.—The fact that beauty belongs to the life of appreciation as explaining the difficulty in defining beauty. Possible to define the relations upon which beauty depends rather than beauty itself.

The relation of habit and custom in the appreciation of beauty. Evidence of a conventional element in changes of taste and standard in reference both to Nature and the arts.

The relation of the parts to the whole in Nature or art; and the relation of an organism or a thing made to the function it is to fulfil. Contrast deformity and beauty. The sublimity of a great machine.

The deeper relation of body to soul, of form to content, as a determining principle of beauty. Beauty depending less upon what is sensuously pleasing, than upon adequate and harmonious expression, the perfect marrying of body and soul.

Still deeper relation behind all appreciation of beauty. The rhythm or harmony that inevitably exists between man’s sensibilities and the Nature-world in relation to which these senses have been evolved. Since all forms utilized in the arts are drawn finally from Nature, this principle behind all appreciation of beauty in the arts as well as in Nature.

Unity of the life of appreciation. Hence all cultivation of the true response to beauty deepening and refining the life of love and of religion.

Nature and art.—The two worlds of beauty; each possessing its own superiority. Identity of form and content in the beauty of Nature; living and everchanging character of Nature. Hence the healing, resting and exalting power of Nature in ministering to the spirit of man. On the other hand, the soul in Nature dumb and brooding; carried to clear and conscious expression through human art. Art as Nature and life put through the spectrum of man’s mind and heart. Compare a Corot painting with a bit of Nature; a portrait by Titian or Rembrandt with a human face. Thus the ministration of art to the human spirit: in calming and exalting; in giving widened relation to Nature and life, developing power to see; in inspiring action.

Opportunities for the appreciation of beauty.—The wealth of natural beauty poured out abundantly on every hand. Tendency to ignore or fail to see the beauty of Nature just because it is so universal and accessible. Need to put oneself in the way of beauty; to leave room for the heaven of the unexpected.

If the beauty of art is less accessible, nevertheless far more than is utilized and enjoyed. Compare in poetry, painting, music. The current attitude toward museums of art and opportunities in music.

The conscious study of beauty.—Not enough to give oneself opportunities for enjoying beauty. Compare the people who live close to Nature without seeing her beauty; who wander aimlessly through art galleries and sit unappreciatively through an evening of great music because it is the fashion. Need of conscious study of beauty as a means toward appreciation.

The method of the conscious study of beauty in Nature and the arts. Need to isolate and analyze. The ways by which one may escape convention and react freshly on the appeal of beauty. The active questioning which the student should employ. The deepened conscious appreciation which results from such study. The greater value of a little of such direct and active study over much reading of art criticism and theory.

Some expression necessary to complete such study. Various forms that may be employed. The value of keeping a book of reflections in which to formulate and record one’s study and appreciation.

The value of art for the artist.—The ministry of beauty fulfilled in the supreme way for the creative artist. Clarifying and exalting influence of art upon the artist. Development in him of power to see and to achieve. Illustrations in great masters such as Michael Angelo and Dante. Thus for the artist supremely as for the student in lesser degree, art for life’s sake.

Art and daily life.—Need that each human being should be an artist: this possible in the supreme art of living. Thus need to identify beauty and use: to make one’s vocation, one’s environment, one’s relationships art in the highest sense. How then every part and aspect of life would be the adequate and harmonious expression and interpretation of some phase of man’s life and experience in true relation to the whole.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Supreme Art is the region of Equals. There is no primacy among masterpieces.”

—Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, p. 40.

“The technical work of our time, which is done to an unprecedented perfection, has, by increasing and multiplying objects of luxury, given the favourites of fortune a choice between more leisure and culture upon the one side, and additional luxury and good living, but with increased activity, upon the other; and, true to their character, they choose the latter, and prefer champagne to freedom.”

—Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature, p. 141.

“The capacity of the sublime is one of the noblest aptitudes of man. Beauty is useful, but does not go beyond man. The sublime applies to the pure spirit. The sublime must be joined to the beautiful to complete the æsthetic education, and to enlarge man’s heart beyond the sensuous world.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 141.

“Let us remember the prompter, very delicately and genially drawn by Goethe in a few touches, who is so much moved at certain places that he weeps hot tears; yet ‘it is, strictly speaking, not the so-called moving places that affect him so, but the beautiful places from which the pure genius of the poet, so to speak, looks out from bright, open eyes.’ In the case of persons of a predominantly tender, ardent disposition we not seldom meet this phenomenon. A beautiful poem, a sublime scene in nature—nay, the narration of a good deed, moves them to tears. And history tells us of the noble Saladin, who was a warlike hero, that the narration of great deeds and simple touching occurrences often moved him also to tears. It can hardly be assumed that a warlike hero is the possessor of weak nerves. What have these grayish-white threads to do at all with the eternal ideas of the Good and the Beautiful? The emotion of which we have just spoken is something better than mere nervous irritation; it is a higher kind of homesickness, which attacks us when the ideas of the Good and the Beautiful suddenly appear before us and remind us of our eternal home.”

—Ambros, The Boundaries of Music and Poetry, pp. 42, 43.

“We leave a grand musical performance with our feelings excited, the reading of a noble poem with a quickened imagination, a beautiful statue or building with an awakened understanding; but a man would not choose an opportune moment who attempted to invite us to abstract thinking after a high musical enjoyment, or to attend to a prosaic affair of common life after a high poetical enjoyment, or to kindle our imagination and astonish our feelings directly after inspecting a fine statue or edifice. The reason of this is, that music, by its matter, even when most spiritual, presents a greater affinity with the senses than is permitted by aesthetic liberty; it is because even the most happy poetry, having for its medium the arbitrary and contingent play of the imagination, always shares in it more than the intimate necessity of the really beautiful allows; it is because the best sculpture touches on severe science by what is determinate in its conception. However, these particular affinities are lost in proportion as the works of these three kinds of art rise to a greater elevation, and it is a natural and necessary consequence of their perfection, that, without confounding their objective limits, the different arts come to resemble each other more and more, in the action which they exercise on the mind. At its highest degree of ennobling, music ought to become a form, and act on us with the calm power of an antique statue; in its most elevated perfection, the plastic art ought to become music and move us by the immediate action exercised on the mind by the senses; in its most complete development, poetry ought both to stir us powerfully like music and like plastic art to surround us with a peaceful light. In each art, the perfect style consists exactly in knowing how to remove specific limits, while sacrificing at the same time the particular advantages of the art, and to give it by a wise use of what belongs to it specially a more general character.”

—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, pp. 90, 91.

“When a beautiful soul harmonizes with a beautiful form, and the two are cast in one mold, that will be the fairest of sights to him who has an eye to see it.”

—Plato, Republic, book III, section 402.

“The amphora which refuses to go to the fountain deserves the hisses of the water-pots.”

—Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, p. 319.

“The true artist has no pride; unhappily he realizes that art has no limitations, he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and while perhaps he is admired by others, he grieves that he has not yet reached the point where the better genius shall shine before him like a distant sun.”

—Beethoven, in Kerst, Beethoven: The Man and the Artist, p. 49.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. Define the respective functions of art and philosophy in relation to the human spirit.

2. Compare in significance and relative value, beauty in Nature and in human art.

3. Can beauty exist without definite and limited form?

4. What does creative expression in art do for the artist?

5. Is it possible to define beauty satisfactorily?

6. Sum up all the elements and relations involved in the appreciation of beauty.

7. What end and aim is evident in the creation of all great art?

8. In what ways does the beauty of Nature and of art minister to the spirit of man?

9. What should be the relation of art to daily life?

10. How can life be made a fine art?

REFERENCES

Carpenter, Angels’ Wings. Dwight, Intellectual Influence of Music; Music as a Means of Culture. Eastman, Musical Education and Musical Art. Emerson, Art (in Essays, first series, pp. 325-343); Art (in Society and Solitude, pp. 39-59). Gurney, The Power of Sound. Hamerton, The Intellectual Life. Hand, Æsthetics of Musical Art. Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of Fine Art. Holden, Audiences. Lanier, Music and Poetry. Mabie, Nature and Culture. Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art. Parry, The Ministry of Fine Art to the Happiness of Life. Partridge, Art for America. Plato, Republic, books II. and III. Puffer, The Psychology of Beauty. Raymond, Essentials of Æsthetics. Schiller, Essays. Surette and Mason, The Appreciation of Music. Tolstoy, What is Art? Wagner, Art Life and Theories of.

SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS

“You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not rightly understand.”

—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, p. 58.

Dealing, as this course does, with the material of four great arts, there is no limit to the work the student may do in connection with it. The most significant point is to recognize that a little first-hand study of works of art is worth more than a vast amount of reading of criticism and theory of art. The best preparation for the course is to select a few works of art in each of the four fields and study them carefully; analyzing rigorously the effect each produces on the student’s senses, emotions and intellect; seeking to discover the means by which that effect is produced; and endeavoring to define what part or aspect of man’s life and reaction on Nature finds expression and interpretation in each artistic creation studied. The student must formulate his own questioning and work with a mind consistently active, not passive.

This is merely demanding in the field of the arts the same direct inductive study of the material given, that is universally recognized to-day as the only sound method in every field of science. It is surprising how a little of such study will clarify the field of art. Works drop quickly into place, each is understood in relation to others and to the common background of human experience in both significance and beauty. This intellectual result is, however, not all; indeed, it is the less important consequence of the work. The great gain is in deepened appreciation. The student turns to fresh works of art with a multiplied power to respond to the appeal of each masterpiece. Thus is his life widened and deepened in relation to man and Nature, and blessed with the joy that beauty gives.

The reading of such books as are given in the following list should be subordinated to the work above outlined, and should be used to clarify and stimulate the student’s own thinking, following the direct study of the works of art themselves.

The material in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics, giving as it does brief but complete works of art selected from widely different men and epochs should be used throughout the course to represent the art of poetry. Where a gallery of painting and sculpture is not accessible to the student, photographic reproductions (obtainable to-day at insignificant price) of the works mentioned in the outlines and lists of topics should be obtained and carefully studied. In music the student should utilize with loving care such opportunities as he can find or make available.

BOOK LIST

Ambros, Wilhelm August, The Boundaries of Music and Poetry, translated by J. H. Cornell. Pp. xiii + 187. G. Schirmer, New York, 1893.

Anderson, Rasmus B., Norse Mythology. Pp. 473. S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago, 1875.

Anderson, Rasmus B. (translator), The Younger Edda. Pp. 302. S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago, 1880.

Aristotle, The Poetic, translated by Theodore Buckley, pp. 405-500 in volume with Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Bohn Library, George Bell & Sons, London, 1890.

Arnold, Matthew, The Study of Poetry, pp. 1-55 in Essays in Criticism, second series. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1906.

Baldwin, James, The Book-Lover. Pp. 201. Jansen, McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1885.

Bascom, John, Philosophy of English Literature. Pp. xii + 318. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1886.

Bates, Arlo, Talks on the Study of Literature. Pp. 260. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1898.

Beeching, H. C., The Study of Poetry. Pp. 57. University Press, Cambridge, 1901.

Bradley, A. C., Poetry for Poetry’s Sake. Pp. 32. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1901.

Brown, G. Baldwin, The Fine Arts. Pp. xii + 321. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1906.

Browning, Robert, Abt Vogler; With Charles Avison (in Parleyings with Certain People); Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha; Saul, in Works. Camberwell edition, T. Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1898.

Bulfinch, Thomas, The Age of Chivalry. Pp. viii + 414. Crosby, Nichols & Co., Boston, 1859.

Bulfinch, Thomas, The Age of Fable, edited by E. E. Hale. New edition. Pp. xxi + 568. S. W. Tilton & Co., Boston, 1894.

Caffin, Charles H., How to Study Pictures. Pp. xv + 513. The Century Co., New York, 1906.

Carlyle, Thomas, The Hero as Divinity, pp. 1-41 in Heroes and Hero-Worship. Centenary edition. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1897.

Carpenter, Edward, Angels’ Wings: A Series of Essays on Art and Its Relation to Life. Pp. 248. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London, 1898.

Collins, John Churton, The True Functions of Poetry, pp. 263-291 in Studies in Poetry and Criticism. George Bell & Sons, London, 1905.

Corson, Hiram, The Aims of Literary Study. Pp. 153. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1895.

Cox, George W., An Introduction to the Science of Comparative Mythology and Folk-Lore. Pp. xvi + 380. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1881.

Cox, George W., The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. 2 vols., pp. xx + 460 and xv + 397. Longmans, Green, & Co., London, 1870.

Crawshaw, W. H., The Interpretation of Literature. Pp. x + 235. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1902.

Crawshaw, W. H., Literary Interpretation of Life. Pp. viii + 266. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1900.

Dabney, J. P., The Musical Basis of Verse. Pp. x + 269. Longmans, Green, & Co., London, 1901.

Davies, Henry M., The Musical Consciousness. (In Music, vol. XII, pp. 25-38, 171-180, 329-341, 462-472.)

Donaldson, John William, The Theatre of the Greeks. Pp. xii + 435. George Bell & Sons, London, 1891.

Dwight, John S., Intellectual Influence of Music. (In The Atlantic Monthly, vol. XXVI, pp. 614-625.) Boston, Nov., 1870.

Dwight, John S., Music as a Means of Culture. (In The Atlantic Monthly, vol. XXVI, pp. 321-331.) Boston, Sept., 1870.

Eastman, Edith V., Musical Education and Musical Art. Pp. 171. Damrell & Upham, Boston, 1893.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Art, pp. 325-343 in Essays, first series. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1883.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Art, pp. 39-59 in Society and Solitude. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1898.

Engel, Carl, Introduction to the Study of National Music. Pp. x + 435. Longmans, Green, & Co., London, 1886.

Fairbanks, Arthur, The Mythology of Greece and Rome, with Special Reference to its Influence on Literature. Pp. xvii + 408. D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1907.

Gayley, C. M. (editor), Classic Myths in English Literature. Pp. xlv + 540. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1894.

Goddard, Joseph, Reflections upon Musical Art Considered in its Wider Relations. Pp. viii + 87. Goddard & Co., London, 1893.

Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann and Soret, translated by John Oxenford. Pp. xxvii + 583. Bohn Library, George Bell & Sons, London, 1901.

Goethe, The Maxims and Reflections of, translated by T. Bailey Saunders. Pp. 223. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1893.

Goethe, Travels in Italy, translated by A. J. W. Morrison and Charles Nesbit. Pp. 589. Bohn Library, George Bell & Sons, London, 1892.

Goldziher, Ignaz, Mythology among the Hebrews and its Historical Development, translated by Russell Martineau. Pp. xxxv + 457. Longmans, Green, & Co., London, 1877.

Grosse, Ernest, The Beginnings of Art. Pp. xiv + 327. D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1897.

Guerber, H. A., Myths of Greece and Rome. Pp. 428. American Book Co., New York, 1893.

Guerber, H. A., Myths of Northern Lands. Pp. 319. American Book Co., New York, 1895.

Gummere, Francis B., The Beginnings of Poetry. Pp. x + 483. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1901.

Gummere, Francis B., A Handbook of Poetics. Pp. vi + 250. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1885.

Gurney, Edmund, The Power of Sound. Pp. xi + 559. Smith, Elder, & Co., London, 1880.

Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, The Intellectual Life. Pp. xix + 455. Roberts Bros., Boston, 1891.

Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, Thoughts About Art. Pp. xxiv + 383. Roberts Bros., Boston, 1878.

Hanchett, Henry G., The Art of the Musician: A Guide to the Intellectual Appreciation of Music. Pp. viii + 327. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1905.

Hand, Ferdinand, Æsthetics of Musical Art; or, the Beautiful in Music, translated from the German by Walter E. Lawson. Pp. xviii + 187. London, 1880.

Hanslick, Dr. Eduard, The Beautiful in Music, translated by Gustav Cohen. Novello, Ewer & Co., New York, 1891.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Introduction to the Philosophy of Fine Art, translated by B. Bosanquet. Pp. xxxiii + 175. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London, 1886.

Helmholtz, Hermann L. F., On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, translated by Alexander J. Ellis. Pp. xix + 576. Longmans, Green, & Co., London, 1885.

Henderson, W. J., What is Good Music? Pp. xiii + 205. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1905.

Holden, Florence P., Audiences: A Few Suggestions to Those Who Look and Listen. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1896.

Holmes, Edmond, What is Poetry? Pp. 98. Lane, New York, 1900.

Hugo, Victor, William Shakespeare, translated by Melville B. Anderson. Pp. 24 + 424. A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1899.

Kerst, Friedrich (compiler and annotator), Beethoven: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words, translated and edited by Henry Edward Krehbiel. Pp. 110. B. W. Huebsch, New York, 1905.

Kerst, Friedrich (compiler and annotator), Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words, translated and edited by Henry Edward Krehbiel. Pp. 143. B. W. Huebsch, New York, 1905.

Knight, William, The Philosophy of the Beautiful. 2 vols. Pp. xv + 288 and xii + 281. John Murray, London, 1891-3.

Kobbé, Gustav, How to Appreciate Music. Pp. 275. Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1906.

Krehbiel, Henry Edward, How to Listen to Music. Pp. xv + 36l. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1897.

Kufferath, M., Rhythm, Melody and Harmony. (In Music, vol. XVII, pp. 31-39, 155-163.) Chicago, 1899, 1900.

LaFarge, J., Considerations on Painting. Pp. vi + 270. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1901.

Lanier, Sidney, Music and Poetry. Pp. viii + 248. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1899.

Lanier, Sidney, The Science of English Verse. Pp. 315. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1901.

Leighton, Lord, Addresses Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy. Pp. 310. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., London, 1896.

Lessing, G. E., Laokoön, pp. 1-169 in Laokoön, etc., translated by E. C. Beasley and Helen Zimmern. Bohn Library, George Bell & Sons, London, 1900.

Lewes, George Henry, The Principles of Success in Literature. Pp. xv + 235. Walter Scott, London, n. d.

Mabie, Hamilton Wright, Books and Culture. Pp. 279. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1896.

Mabie, Hamilton Wright, Essays on Nature and Culture. Pp. 326. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1896.

Mabie, Hamilton Wright, Short Studies in Literature. Pp. vi + 201. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1892.

Mach, Edmund von, Greek Sculpture; Its Spirit and Principles. Pp. xviii + 359 + xl. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1903.

Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte Darthur, edited with introduction by Sir Edward Strachey. Pp. lvi + 509. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1901.

Mathews, W. S. B., How to Understand Music. 2 vols., pp. 216 + 87 and viii + 208. Theodore Presser, Philadelphia, 1886, 1888.

Mathews, W. S. B., Music: Its Ideals and Methods. Pp. iii + 225. Theodore Presser, Philadelphia, 1897.

Morison, John H., The Great Poets as Religious Teachers. Pp. 200. Harper & Bros., New York, 1886.

Morris, William, Hopes and Fears for Art. Pp. 217. Roberts Bros., Boston, 1882.

Moyse, Charles E., Poetry, as a Fine Art. Pp. 79. Elliot Stock, London, 1883.

Münsterberg, Hugo, The Principles of Art Education. Pp. 114. The Prang Educational Co., New York, 1905.

Newman, John Henry, Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle’s Poetics. Pp. x + 36. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1891.

Norton, Edwin Lee, The Intellectual Element in Music, pp. 167-201 in Studies in Philosophy and Psychology. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1906.

Noyes, Carleton, The Enjoyment of Art. Pp. xiii + 101. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1903.

Palgrave, Francis Turner (editor), The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language. Series I, pp. 381; series II, pp. xii + 275. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1896, 1897.

Palgrave, Francis Turner, Poetry Compared with the Other Fine Arts. (In Littell’s Living Age, vol. CLXXI, pp. 259-267; vol. CLXXIII, pp. 579-589.) Boston, 1886, 1887.

Parry, C. Hubert H., The Evolution of the Art of Music. Pp. x + 342. D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1906.

Parry, T. Gambier, The Ministry of Fine Art to the Happiness of Life. Pp. viii + 368. John Murray, London, 1886.

Partridge, William Ordway, Art for America. Pp. 192. Roberts Bros., Boston, 1894.

Plato, The Republic, translated by B. Jowett. Books II and III. Oxford University Press, 1892.

Poe, Edgar Allen, The Rationale of Verse and The Poetic Principle, pp. 209-292 in vol. XIV of Works, edited by James A. Harrison. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, 1902.

Posnett, Hutcheson Macauley, Comparative Literature. Pp. x + 402. D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1886.

Pryde, David, Highways of Literature. Pp. 156. Funk & Wagnalls, New York, n. d.

Puffer, Ethel D., The Psychology of Beauty. Pp. vii + 286. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1906.

Raymond, George Lansing, Art in Theory. Pp. xviii + 266. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1894.

Raymond, George Lansing, The Essentials of Æsthetics. Pp. xix + 404. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1906.

Raymond, George Lansing, The Genesis of Art-Form. Pp. xxii + 311. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1893.

Raymond, George Lansing, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts. Pp. xxxv + 431. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1895.

Raymond, George Lansing, Poetry as a Representative Art. Pp. xv + 346. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1886.

Raymond, George Lansing, Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music. Pp. xxxvi + 344. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1904.

Ritter, Frederic Louis, Music in Its Relation to Intellectual Life; Romanticism in Music. Pp. 98. Edward Schuberth & Co., New York, 1891.

Ruskin, John, Aratra Pentelici; Elements of Sculpture. Pp. xi + 181. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1886.

Ruskin, John, Lectures on Art. Pp. 202. Merrill & Baker, New York, n. d.

Ruskin, John, Modern Painters. 5 vols., pp. lxxiii + 429, xiii + 230, xii + 341, 403, and xiv + 390. Merrill & Baker, New York, n. d.

Ruskin, John, The Two Paths: Lectures on Art. Pp. xvii + 270. Maynard, Merrill & Co., New York, 1893.

Saint-Saëns, Camille, The Nature and Object of Music. (In Music, vol. V, pp. 557-572.) Chicago, March, 1894.

Santayana, George, The Elements and Function of Poetry, pp. 251-290 in Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1900.

Schiller, Friedrich, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, translated from the German. Pp. 435. Bohn Library, George Bell & Sons, London, 1905.

Schopenhauer, Arthur, The Art of Literature, translated by T. Bailey Saunders. Pp. xiv + 149. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1891.

Schopenhauer, Arthur, The Metaphysics of Fine Art, pp. 125-140 in Religion and Other Essays, translated by T. Bailey Saunders. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London, 1891.

Schopenhauer, Arthur, On the Metaphysics of Music, pp. 155-177 in Wagner’s Beethoven. William Reeves, London, 1880.

Shairp, John Campbell, Aspects of Poetry. Pp. x + 401. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1882.

Shairp, John Campbell, Poetic Interpretation of Nature. Pp. x + 279. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1882.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, A Defence of Poetry, pp. 1-41 in Essays and Letters, edited by Ernest Rhys. Walter Scott, London, 1886.

Sidney, Philip, Defense of Poesy, edited by Albert S. Cook. Pp. xlv + 143. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1890.

Spencer, Herbert, The Origin and Function of Music, pp. 401-451 in Essays, vol. II. D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1892.

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, The Nature and Elements of Poetry. Pp. xx + 338. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, 1892.

Sturgis, Russell, The Appreciation of Pictures. Pp. 308. The Baker & Taylor Co., New York, 1905.

Sturgis, Russell, The Appreciation of Sculpture. Pp. 235. The Baker & Taylor Co., New York, 1904.

Surette, Thoman Whitney, and Mason, Daniel Gregory, The Appreciation of Music. Pp. xi + 222. The Baker & Taylor Co., New York, 1906.

Taine, H., Lectures on Art, translated by John Durand. 2 vols., pp. 354 and 540. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1889.

Tolstoy, L. N., What is Art?, translated by Charles Johnston. Pp. iii + 298. Henry Altemus, Philadelphia, 1898.

Van Dyke, John C., Art for Art’s Sake. Pp. xii + 249. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1893.

Van Dyke, John C., How to Judge of a Picture. Pp. 168. Chautauqua Press, Chautauqua, N. Y., 1888.

Van Dyke, John C., The Meaning of Pictures. Pp. xiv + 161. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1903.

Van Dyke, John C., Principles of Art. Pp. 291. Fords, Howard & Hulbert, New York, 1887.

Vinci, Leonardo da, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged and rendered into English with introductions by Edward McCurdy. Pp. xiv + 289. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1908.

Vinci, Leonardo da, A Treatise on Painting, translated by J. F. Rigand. Pp. lxvii + 238. George Bell & Sons, London, 1906.

Wagner, Richard, Art Life and Theories of, selected from his writings and translated by Edward L. Burlingame. Pp. xiii + 305. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1904.

Wagner, Richard, Beethoven, translated by Edward Dannreuther. Pp. viii + 177. William Reeves, London, 1880.

Warner, Charles Dudley, The Relation of Literature to Life. Pp. 320. Harper & Bros., New York, 1897.

Waterhouse, C. H., The Signification and Principles of Art. Pp. 154. J. S. Virtue & Co., London, 1886.

Wilde, Oscar, The Critic as Artist, pp. 85-196 in Intentions. Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Me., 1904.

Wilde, Oscar, The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Pp. 90. Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Me., 1905.

Winchester, C. T., Some Principles of Literary Criticism. Pp. xii + 352. The Macmillan Co., New York, 1899.

Witt, Robert Clermont, How to Look at Pictures. Pp. xviii + 173. George Bell & Sons. London, 1902.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.

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Table of Contents

- ART AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT

- SPIRIT OF THE COURSE

- I. THE EXPRESSION AND INTERPRETATION OF HUMAN LIFE IN ART

- II. THE PRIMITIVE SOURCES OF ART

- III. THE RACE, THE EPOCH AND THE INDIVIDUAL IN ART

- IV. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

- V. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF MUSIC
- VI. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF POETRY
- VII. LITERATURE AND LIBERAL CULTURE
- VIII. BEAUTY AND THE CULTURE OF THE SPIRIT
- SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS
- BOOK LIST
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE