CHAPTER VIIDEDUCTION OF ART-FORMS
In the science of art many hypotheses have been advanced as to the order in which the different art-forms have made their appearance. We do not intend to bring forward any new arguments on this much-debated question. Even if our knowledge of prehistoric man were so complete and trustworthy as to entitle us to draw any conclusions as to the earliest stages in art-development, such an appeal to history would in the present connection constitute a grave confusion of standpoints. As long as we are occupied with that abstract datum, the purely artistic activity, we cannot possibly find any support for our reasoning in existing works of art, concerning which the question may always be raised whether the motive was or was not a purely autotelic art-impulse. We shall therefore in the following pages entirely ignore the question of historical sequence and restrict our attention to the various degrees of theoretical priority. Starting from the interpretation of artistic activity which was postulated, but not yet proved, in the preceding chapter, we shall consider those art-forms as most primordial which stand in the closest connection with the expression of feeling. By comparing those manifestations of art-activity which are from our standpoint elementary, with the non-æsthetic expression of emotional states, we shall try to isolate the peculiarly artistic qualities in their simplest possible form. If the result of such a treatment prove consistent with general æsthetic ideals, as exhibited in the literature of art, this fact will naturally go to the credit of our explanation.
The purest and most typical expression of simple feeling is that which consists of mere random movements. Those activities, whether of the whole body or of special parts,—the larynx, for instance,—which follow immediately upon, or rather accompany, a state of pleasure or pain, are in themselves entirely non-æsthetic. Thus it is impossible to see anything artistic in the spectacle of a man leaping or shouting for joy. Yet the lowest kind of lyrical music and lyrical “gymnastic” dance may be almost as directly connected with the original state of feeling as these purely expressional activities. The only difference is that in music and dance the movements have been limited and restrained by the adoption of a fixed sequence in time. This fixed sequence in time—the rhythm—must therefore, from our point of view, be considered as the simplest of all art-forms.
If we were to give a complete account of the psychology of rhythm, it would be impossible not to resort to a sociological and historical mode of treatment. By Dr. Wallaschek’s researches on primitive music it has been conclusively shown how important a part rhythm, as a means of facilitating co-operation, has played in the struggle for existence.[124]And this utilitarian explanation has recently been carried even farther by Professor Bücher, who points out the invaluable saving of effort which the individual obtains by regulating his movements in a fixed sequence of time.[125]We may think that Professor Bücher has stretched his point too far in endeavouring to derive almost all music and poetry from the economical exigencies of labour;[126]but there can be no doubt that in whichever way the ultimate origin of musical arts be explained, their development is largely due to the practical advantages of rhythm. These considerations, however, which will be developed in the following chapters, need not detain us here, where we have to do with the presumably non-utilitarian and purely æsthetic work of art. If the practical advantages of economy and co-operation can be eliminated,—if we can imagine a dance and a song which has not for its aim the facilitation or regulation of some form of work or the stimulation of some effort, which, in short, has its sole aim and purpose in itself,—then the art-element in this dance or song must be explicable without reference to “foreign” purposes.
The only explanation we have been able to find is one which brings us back to the standpoint of the last chapter. Looking upon art as an essentially social activity, we naturally bestow our main attention upon rhythm as a factor of unification. But as we are not allowed to take into account its importance forpracticalco-operation, we can only interpret it as a means of bringing aboutemotionalcommunity. And it is evident that the fixed sequence in time, when used for the purpose of communicating a state of feeling, must produce the same effect as when it serves the purpose of diffusing and regulating the impulses to work.
This fact can also be observed in all cases of social expression. The most general and simple states of emotional excitement, such as a festive mood or a warlike intoxication, may indeed be diffused with sufficient efficacy by simple contagious imitation. But even with regard to such eminently infectious feelings, if a great mass of men is to be collectively and simultaneously stimulated by a common execution of the appropriate expressive movements, these movements must be regulated by the adoption of a rhythm. On the other hand, as soon as the expression is fixed in rhythmical form its contagious power is incalculably increased. By its incessant and regular recurrence, the rhythm takes a ruthless hold of the attention, and thereby compels even the most recalcitrant to yield to the power of the transmitted feeling.[127]
As evidence of the irresistibility with which a rhythmical expression may rouse an audience to an almost unvoluntary imitation, one may refer to the familiar effects of the southern dances. The tarantella, as is well known, often entices the unwilling as well as the willing to join in its wild movements. And the same is said of several other Spanish and Italian dances. We need only refer to the apologue of the Fandango, so often used as a motive of ballets, in which the dance, brought into court for causing disturbance, compels judge and jury to yield to its temptations and dissolve the sitting for a fierce gambade.[128]Such stories give an exaggerated yet typical example of the great influence which the sight of dancing exercises on the lively Latinnations. An impassive Northerner can indeed always master the impulse to join actively in a wild dance. But even he cannot avoid sharing the excitement by internal imitation.
It is, however, impossible to decide with any exactitude whether the effects which a dance-performance exercises on the spectators are mainly due to the movements themselves or to the rhythm by which they are regulated. In order, therefore, to estimate at its proper value the importance of time, it is necessary to examine it as it appears when isolated from bodily movement. The lowest types of music, in which the element of melody is of no importance, show us rhythm in its simplest and purest form. Such instruments as drums, tom-toms, and castanets may serve as a most effective means of emotional excitation. The same exaltation or depression, which in a dance is conveyed by a series of varied expressive movements, may be transmitted with almost equal effectiveness by a simple sequence of sounds. Any group of acoustic impressions following each other in a fixed rhythm may, independently of their character, arouse in the listener the same modifications of functions and activities, and hence also the same emotional state, as was originally expressed by this particular time-sequence. Thus pure feeling, as it appears when abstraction has been made of all intellectual elements, can be as it were exteriorised in rhythmical form. And, which is of still greater importance, a pure feeling can in this exteriorisation be fixed down for future repetition. Even in its simplest manifestations art is thus capable of raising an emotional state beyond the limitations of space and time.
It is most natural, when speaking of the connection between feeling and rhythm, to refer to dance and thesimplest vocal and instrumental music. But it goes without saying that the effects are the same in kind, although less in degree, when the time-sequence is impressed upon our mind in some more indirect way. Thus, by appropriating the element of rhythm, which enters into all poetry, we may in reciting or reading a verse partake of an emotional state in the same way as we do when joining, actively or “internally,” the movements of a dance. Similarly, the formative and decorative arts may, by compelling our eye to follow a regular arrangement of lines and figures, transmit to us an emotional excitement by the mediation of rhythm. Ornament, that purely popular art, may therefore be compared as to its psychological effects with simple popular dances and melodies.[129]
In these three logically most primordial arts, viz. gymnastic dance, geometric ornament, and unmelodic, simply rhythmical music or singing, the unmotived “objectless” feeling is expressed in a medium which directly conveys to us its accompanying modifications of activity. Notwithstanding the meagreness of their intellectual content, these purely lyrical forms, if we may so call them, are therefore emotionally suggestive to a high degree. General and indistinct moods, such as a feeling of ease, of liberation from restraint, of assurance and power, etc., may by them be transmitted with unsurpassable fidelity. But their expressive power is also confined to such purely hedonic states. Whenever, therefore, the feeling forms a part of a differentiatedand fully formed emotion, the impulse to social expression must avail itself of some more adequate means of transmission.
In point of fact there will nearly always, even in the most impulsive outburst of pleasure or pain, enter an element of simple dramatic representation, by which some of the mental qualities distinctive of the various emotions are communicated. With regard to dancing, for instance, we can only speak in the abstract of any simply “gymnastic” forms.[130]Even if the movements originally aim at nothing but enhancement or relief for an indistinct emotional state, they will unavoidably take the character of such movements as have been connected with some emotion, and thereby, in spectators as well as in performers, awaken some faint revival of this complex state of feeling. This process can be very clearly observed in the case of the pseudo-pantomimes which are so general among lower tribes. When a savage is in a high-strung state of feeling, he generally resorts to the same movements which have served him to express the greatest and most frequent excitements of his life. Among warlike tribes the dances of joy, as well as their developments, salutation dances, and complimentary dances,[131]generally have a distinct military character.[132]No doubt it may be contended that theparticular character of these pantomimes was originally a result of political considerations. In a military state of society it is perhaps simply a measure of safety to receive strangers with threats. But however important this utilitarian aspect may be, it seems more probable that a great part of these apparently unmotived pantomimes, which are executed when we should expect only a simple outburst of joy, are best interpreted as real instances of borrowed expression, necessitated by the limitations of our means of expression and furthered by associative processes.
In the life of self-contained educated men we do not generally meet with this phenomenon in so distinct a form. But even here the fragmentary pantomimes into which a man often falls when mastered by a quite indistinct feeling—we need only refer to the erotic character of embraces and other gestures of joy—show us that expression always adds an element of definiteness to the psychical state expressed. When treating of the reactions consequent upon bodily pain, we have already had to take into account the species of imaginative materialisation, as though pain were a concrete thing, a shirt of Nessus, by which a sufferer is generally induced to explain his automatic movements. Here we need only point out that a similar, so to speak, mythogenic influence, a natural tendency to personification, results not only from reactions to pain, but also from all expressive activities. An indistinct mood of pleasure thus generally passes over into a joy—that is, a feeling which is referred to some cause, imaginary or real—when the functional enhancement has reached our voluntary muscles. An oppression, which in its origin may be purely physiological, is transformed, when the bodily modifications become moredifferentiated,[133]into fear of something unknown—for instance, some impending danger.
Since it is so difficult for the individual himself to perceive a mental state as one of pure sensation with no element of thought, we need not wonder that his expression always transmits to the spectator something more than the mere excitement or depression of simple feeling. However strictly we try to isolate the pure rhythm of a lyrical performance, there will always slip into it an element of mimetic expression—we do not know of a better adjective—which suggests a mental state, distincter and better defined than that of pure feeling. In reality, therefore, the dramatic forms of dancing are no less primordial than those purely rhythmical manifestations which the necessities of treatment have compelled us to consider as a separate group.[134]It is also evident that the dramatic or mimetic element will increase in importance as the endeavour to represent mental states and transmit them to outsiders becomes more conscious and deliberate.
We have dealt at sufficient length with the transmission of emotion by mimetic expression. A striking instance of this process has already been found outside the domain of art in the contagiousness of collective states of mind. When art adopts emotional transmission as an end in itself, this contagiousness is naturally increased. On the side of the executant we have to suppose a conscious endeavour to make the mimic expression as easily appropriated as possible; on the side of the spectator an increased readiness to partake of the expressed feeling. A theatrical audience, indeed, unlike a riotous mob, does not generally go so far as to imitate its leader, the actor, by actual movement. Conscious of the fictitious character of the performance, the spectators are able to resist the sub-conscious volitional impulses which they receive. But while thus controlling their outward activity, those who attentively follow the acting may nevertheless appropriate in an almost direct manner the feelings represented. Although they remain passive spectators and preserve an appearance of immobility, they are apt to follow, in a kind of abridgment, the attitudes and facial play of the performers. At the most critical stages of a popular melodrama the audience always falls into an unconscious pantomime, which, as Engel remarked, to the psychological observer is of far greater interest than that enacted on the stage.[135]In the higher forms of dramatic art this direct transmission of feeling no doubt loses a great deal of its importance. But we believe that every attentive playgoer has occasional opportunities of observing, in himself if not in his neighbours, faint traces of an unconscious and involuntary imitationwhich follows all the movements of the performers. Such imitation will, of course, become more and more pronounced the more the dialogue gives place to pantomimic action, and the more vividly and convincingly this action is represented. As an example of the power with which a good mimic may compel even the most critical spectator to participate in emotional moods, we cannot quote anything better than the description of Garrick in Lichtenberg’sBriefe aus England. “His facial expression is so powerful as to invite imitation. When he is grave his audience is grave. When he frowns the house frowns, and it smiles when he smiles. In his hidden pleasure, and in his intimate manner, when, in an aside, he gives the audience his confidence, there is something so winning that one’s whole soul goes out to this fascinating man.”[136]
It may be thought that the above described processes occur only in those arts which can be called dramatic in the proper sense of the word. If this were the case, the principle of emotional transmission by direct imitation would of course be of very restricted æsthetic importance. We think, however, that a histrionic element can be noticed, with greater or less distinctness, no doubt, in all the various forms of artistic production. It certainly enters into literature, where popular authors, especially of the sentimental class, always possessed the secret of suggesting feelings by representing their manifestations in “contagious” description. And it plays an important part in all the arts of design, formative as well as decorative.
We may often catch ourselves faintly imitating movements or attitudes represented in sculpture. And this influence of suggestion is felt not only, as ProfessorLange thinks, in the case of melodramatic sculpture—expressive of the most violent passions—it contributes also, in no slight degree, to our enjoyment of the forms which represent the gentler moods.[137]However calm and impassive the facial expression of a statue may be, the attitude of the body will always communicate to us a feeling of some kind, of strength and assurance, or perhaps of settled melancholy.
In the art of painting this mimetic principle tends to be lost among the descriptive elements. The direct transmission of feeling is replaced by an indirect and associative one. Still, there are few works, if any, in which the histrionic factor is entirely lacking. It may be detected with especial clearness in sentimental or comic figure-painting, which often literally infects us with the emotions it represents. When looking at a Japanese caricature, for instance, of the gods of happiness, we often laugh with the laughter of the picture long before we have realised the cause of it, or formulated any judgment as to the artistic merits of the representation.
It is true that pictorial art has many branches in which the human figure does not appear at all. But this absence does not by any means entail a complete loss of mimetic suggestiveness. As our perceptions, whether of animate or inanimate objects, are always accompanied by a complete or abortive imitation, any kind of form or movement may call forth in us activities distinctive of some emotional mood. Just as a rhythmic series of simple acoustic or visual impressions may occasion in us the functional modifications accompanying simple feeling, and thereby arouse in us the mental state of which this rhythm is an exteriorisation, so the mimic movements which are the physiological counterparts of distinct emotion may be, so to speak, translated into lines and forms, by which the emotion is reproduced in other minds. Thus even an object of handicraft—a vase, for instance—may, by the suggestiveness of its shape, affect our emotional life in an almost immediate way. And geometric ornament has an equal, if not even greater, power of conjuring up in us emotional states, which we read into the angles and volutes. Finally, the concrete objects of nature are full of “expressive qualities” which make them available as a means of conveying our feelings. The whole world of visual reality can thus be used in a kind of indirect mimetism,—a dramatic expression, so to speak, in which natural and abstract forms replace the human body.
The course of our argument has led us to emphasise the lyrical and dramatic elements in artistic activity. But we do not by any means wish to underrate the fact that it is only a very small minority of works the nature of which can be exhaustively described by these two qualities. With increased importance of the intellectual elements accompanying the emotional states, direct emotional suggestion must unavoidably appear an inadequate means of communication. A joy or a sorrow, together with a notion of some objective cause of it, rapture or admiration, anger, hate, or despair,—all these and similar states can be completely conveyed to an outsider only in so far as they have been accounted for to his intellect. As the theoretically latest manifestation of the craving for social expression there will thus appear an impulse to represent or describe objective events or things, by which a feeling similar to that ofthe producing artist may be called forth in his audience. And thus in almost all art-forms, in ornament and music as well as in painting and novels, there will be found an imitation of nature which serves what in the widest use of the term we may call an epic purpose.
The intellectual justification of a feeling by representation of a cause and the orderly form of its direct or secondary expression are, however, in themselves insufficient to secure a response; the attention and goodwill of the audience must first be conciliated. A sympathetic rapport always presupposes a state of compliance in at least one of the parties involved. When seeking by means of a work of art to obtain a response to an overmastering feeling the artist is thus constrained to exercise persuasion upon his real or fictitious public. As M. Sully-Prudhomme has finely remarked, it is only by first caressing our senses that art rouses our feelings and awakens our thoughts.[138]Besides that element of beauty which can be immediately derived from the expressed content, and that element of gracefulness which follows as result of the psychical freedom attained by expression, there are in nearly all works of art qualities whose aim is exclusively to please. If we may risk a somewhat audacious parallel, we may say that the work of art, in the same way as a living organism, an animal or a plant, entices the attention and charms the senses with the beauty of its “means of attraction,” not for the sake of these attractions themselves, but for the secret they at the same time conceal and disclose. All these allurements might easily cause a superficial observer to lose sight of the simple fact which lies at the bottom of the artistic work, viz. the feeling-state which demands expression and response. We thus see why the impulseto attract by pleasing has been considered as synonymous with the art-impulse.
As has already been remarked, such an interpretation cannot account for the coercive force of the artistic impulse. And equally with the theories based upon the epic or descriptive elements in art, it is incompatible with the principle of the unity of art. If the logical evolution of the art-forms is conceived in the way we have described, all the various manifestations of artistic activity can be derived from one common principle. And by the aid of this one principle we are able to explain the force of that impulse which, with similar coercive force, urges to creation within the various art-forms.
However much the artistic impulse may become differentiated with the progress of culture, its innermost nature will always remain the same. However complex its manifestations, their aim is always to secure a faithful response to an overmastering feeling. The more accomplished the work of art, the more its creator will become independent of the chance audience, which by its sympathetic expression produces an enhancing retroaction on his feeling. He learns to give his mental states an embodiment which facilitates their reproduction in wider surroundings. Thus the expressional impulse directs him to place himself in sympathetic rapport with a fictitious public. He creates, that is to say, expresses himself, for an ideal spectator,—for posterity or for himself. With a proud indifference to his most immediate social environment, he may thus consider his own production as perfectly exempt of any social motivation. The aphorism of Mill, “All poetry is a soliloquy,” would no doubt be accepted by many of the most eminent poets. But the psychological observer cannot help remarking that in such soliloquies the ego serves as asubstitute for an external public. The artist has in a sense a double capacity; and artistic creation in solitude may be always explained by the fact that the creator exists also as his own spectator.
The production of even the most individualistic and most isolated artists can therefore be explained only by sociological considerations. And the same is the case with those artists who work only for posterity. It would be wrong to say that art in any one of its higher manifestations aims at transmitting a feeling. Its purpose is far rather an immortalisation. But this very desire to perpetuate a mental state, this desire which constrains the artist to strive indefatigably for the attainment of a form, capable of imparting to all men of every country and every age the same enhancement and the same rapture which he has himself experienced—this highest manifestation of the expressional impulse—can be fully explained only by reference to the enhancing and relieving power of social expression. In whatever light the art-impulse may appear to the reflecting consciousness of the producing artist, this is the only consistent interpretation at which we can arrive by an examination of the artistic activity on psychological grounds.