Langer Problems of Art PDF

BOOKS BY S U S A N N E K .
LANGER
PHILOSOPHY I N A N E W K E Y
PROBLEM;
FEELING AND FORM
PROBLEMS OF ART
OF
ART
T E N P H I L O S O P H I C A L L E C T U R E S
BY
SUSANNE K. LANGER
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK

TO M Y LIFELONG SOCRATIC TEACHER
IN THE ARTS
HELEN SEWELL
© COPYRIGHT 1957 BY S U S A N N E K. LANGER
3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 M / P 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK
M A Y BE REPRODUCED I N A N Y FORM WITHOUT
THE PERMISSION OF CHARLES SCRIBNER's SONS.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ISBN 0-684-15346-7
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD N U M B E R 57-6068
PREFACE
CONTENTS
ix THE lectures here collected between two covers do not

form a consecutive discourse; with exception of the three
ι. THE DYNAMIC IMAGE: SOME PHILOSOPHICAL Matchette Lectures, grouped under the general title of
"Pivotal Concepts in the Philosophy of Art," these were all
REFLECTIONS ON DANCE / separate addresses (to which is added one published essay,
"Abstraction in Science and Abstraction in Art"). Each lec
2. EXPRESSIVENESS 13
ture was given to a different audience. For this reason, the
basic ideas—the "pivotal concepts" on which my whole art
3. CREATION 2η
theory turns—had to be expounded, or at least sketched, on
4. LIVING FORM 44
almost every occasion. In a book such reiteration would, of
course, be intolerable; hence the deletions and backward ref
5. ARTISTIC PERCEPTION AND "NATURAL LIGHT" 59 erences in the text.
Although the various audiences—dancers, music students,
6. DECEPTIVE ANALOGIES: SPECIES AND REAL college students, learned societies—usually represented some
special interest or attitude to be met by the evening's talk,
RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE ARTS IS yet the lectures when put together prove to have a com
mon theme, dictated by those central concepts that direct
7. IMITATION AND TRANFORMATION IN THE ARTS 90 every special inquiry. Art has many problems, and every
problem has many facets. But the basic issues—what is cre
8. PRINCIPLES OF ART AND CREATIVE DEVICES 108 ated, what is expressed, what is experienced—underlie them
all, and all special solutions are developments of the crucial
9. THE ART SYMBOL AND THE SYMBOL IN ART 124 answers. The single lectures, therefore, may seem to be on
as many single subjects, but they are really somewhat arbi
10. POETIC CREATION 14° trary small spotlights turned on the same great topic, the
APPENDIX: "Abstraction in Science and Abstraction in Art" 163 nature of Art.
Reprinted from Structure, Method and Meaning:
Essays in Honor of Henry M. Sheffer "The Dynamic Image" was published in Dance Observer
INDEX ' 81 (Vol. XXIII, No. 6), July, 1956.
in vii
1
THE DYNAMIC IMAGE: SOME
PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS
ON DANCE
ONCE upon a time a student, paging through a college

catalogue, asked me in evident bewilderment: "What is
'philosophy of art'? H o w in the world can art be
philosophical?"
Art is not philosophical at all; philosophy and art are
two different things. But there is nothing one cannot
philosophize about—that is, there is nothing that does
not offer some philosophical problems. Art, in particu-
lar, presents hosts of them. Artists do not generally moot
such matters explicitly, though they often have fairly
good working notions of a philosophical sort—notions
that only have to be put into the right words to answer
our questions, or at least to move them along toward
their answers.
What, exactly, is a philosophical question?
A philosophical question is always a demand for the
PROBLEMS OF ART THE DYNAMIC IMAGE
meaning of what we are saying. This makes it different but really quite slippery words. T o establish those funda-
from a scientific question, which is a question of fact; mental meanings is philosophical work; and the philoso-
in a question of fact, we take for granted that we know phy of modern science is one of the most brilliant
what we mean—that is, what we are talking about. If intellectual works of our time.
one asks: " H o w far from here is the sun?" the answer The philosophy of art is not so well developed, but
is a statement of fact, "About ninety million miles." W e it is full of life and ferment just now. Both professional
assume that we know what we mean by "the sun" and philosophers and intellectually gifted artists are asking
by "miles" and "being so-and-so far from here." Even questions about the meaning of "art," of "expression,"
if the answer is wrong—if it fails to state a fact, as it of "artistic truth," "form," "reality," and dozens of
would if you answered "twenty thousand miles"—we other words that they hear and use, but find—to their
still know what we are talking about. W e take some surprise—they cannot define, because when they analyze
measurements and find out which answer is true. But what they mean it is not anything coherent and tenable.
suppose one asks: "What is space?" "What is meant by The construction of a coherent theory—a set of con-
'here'?" "What is meant by 'the distance' from here to nected ideas about some whole subject—begins with
somewhere else?" The answer is not found by taking the solution of a central problem; that is, with the es-
measurements or by making experiments or in any way tablishing of a key concept. There is no way of know-
discovering facts. The answer can only be found by ing, by any general rule, what constitutes a central
thinking—reflecting on what we mean. This is some- problem; it is not always the most general or the most
times simple; we analyze our meanings and define each fundamental one you can raise. But the best sign that
word. But more often we find that we have no clear you have broached a central philosophical issue is that in
concepts at all, and the fuzzy ones we have conflict with solving it you raise new interesting questions. The
each other so that as soon as we analyze them, i.e., make concept you construct has implications, and by implica-
them clear, we find them contradictory, senseless, or tion builds up further ideas, that illuminate other con-
fantastic. Then logical analysis does not help us; what cepts of the whole subject, to answer other questions,
we need then is the more difficult, but also more interest- sometimes before you even ask them. A key concept
ing part of philosophy, the part than can not be taught solves more problems than it was designed for.
by any rule—logical construction. W e have to figure In philosophy of art, one of the most interesting prob-
out a meaning for our statements, a way to think about lems—one that proves to be really central—is the mean-
the things that interest us. Science is not possible unless ing of that much-used word, "creation." W h y do we
we can attach some meaning to "distance" and "point" say an artist creates a work? He does not create oil
and "space" and "velocity," and other such familiar pigments or canvas, or the structure of tonal vibrations,
THE DYNAMIC IMAGE
PROBLEMS OF ART
or words of a language if he is a poet, or, in the case The dance is an appearance; if you like, an apparition.
of a dancer, his body and its mobility. He finds all these It springs from what the dancers do, yet it is something
things and uses them, as a cook uses eggs and flour and else. In watching a dance, you do not see what is
so forth to make a cake, or a manufacturer uses wool physically before you—people running around or twist-
to make thread, and thread to make socks. It is only ing their bodies; what you see is a display of interacting
in a mood of humor or extravagance that we speak of the forces, by which the dance seems to be lifted, driven,
cake Mother "created." But when it comes to works drawn, closed, or attenuated, whether it be solo or
of art, we earnestly call them creations. This raises the choric, whirling like the end of a dervish dance, or slow,
philosophical question: What do we mean by that word? centered, and single in its motion. One human body
What is created? may put the whole play of mysterious powers before
you. But these powers, these forces that seem to operate
If you pursue this issue, it grows into a complex of
in the dance, are not the physical forces of the dancer's
closely related questions: what is created in art, what
muscles, which actually cause the movements taking
for, and how? The answers involve just about all the
place. The forces we seem to perceive most directly
key concepts for a coherent philosophy of art: such
and convincingly are created for our perception; and
concepts as apparition, or the image, expressiveness, feel-
they exist only for it.
ing, motif, transformation. There are others, but they are
all interrelated. Anything that exists only for perception, and plays
no ordinary, passive part in nature as common objects
It is impossible to talk, in one lecture, about all the
do, is a virtual entity. It is not unreal; where it confronts
arts, and not end with a confusion of principles and
you, you really perceive it, you don't dream or imagine
illustrations. Since we are particularly concerned, just
that you do. The image in a mirror is a virtual image. A
now, with the dance, let us narrow our discussion and
rainbow is a virtual object. It seems to stand on the
center it about this art. Our first question, then, be-
earth or in the clouds, but it really "stands" nowhere;
comes: What do dancers create?
it is only visible, not tangible. Yet it is a real rainbow,
Obviously, a dance. A s I pointed out before, they do
produced by moisture and light for any normal eye
not create the materials of the dance—neither their own
looking at it from the right place. W e don't just dream
bodies, nor the cloth that drapes them, nor the floor,
that we see it. If, however, we believe it to have the
nor any of the ambient space, light, musical tone, the
ordinary properties of a physical thing, we are mistaken;
forces of gravity, nor any other physical provisions; all
it is an appearance, a virtual object, a sun-created image.
these things they use, to create something over and
above what is physically there: the dance. What dancers create is a dance; and a dance is an
apparition of active powers, a dynamic image. Everything
What, then, is the dance?
4 5
a dancer actually does serves to create what we really feel. It belongs to the dance itself. A dance, like any
see; but what we really see is a virtual entity. The other work of art, is a perceptible form that expresses
physical realities are given: place, gravity, body, muscu- the nature of human feeling—the rhythms and con-
lar strength, muscular control, and secondary assets such nections, crises and breaks, the complexity and richness
as light, sound, or things (usable objects, so-called of what is sometimes called man's "inner life," the
"properties"). All these are actual. But in the dance, they stream of direct experience, life as it feels to the living.
disappear; the more perfect the dance, the less we see Dancing is not a symptom of how the dancer happens
its actualities. What we see, hear, and feel are the virtual to feel; for the dancer's own feelings could not be pre-
realities, the moving forces of the dance, the apparent scribed or predicted and exhibited upon request. Our
centers of power and their emanations, their conflicts own feelings simply occur, and most people do not care
and resolutions, lift and decline, their rhythmic life. to have us express them by sighs or squeals or gesticula-
These are the elements of the created apparition, and tion. If that were what dancers really did, there would
are themselves not physically given, but artistically not be many balletomaniacs to watch them.
created. What is expressed in a dance is an idea; an idea of the
Here we have, then, the answer to our first question: way feelings, emotions, and all other subjective ex-
what do dancers create? The dynamic image, which is periences come and go—their rise and growth, their
the dance. intricate synthesis that gives our inner life unity and
This answer leads naturally to the second question: personal identity. What we call a person's "inner life"
for what is this image created? is the inside story of his own history; the way living in
Again, there is an obvious answer: for our enjoyment. the world feels to him. This kind of experience is
But what makes us enjoy it as intensely as we do? W e do usually but vaguely known, because most of its com-
not enjoy every virtual image, just because it is one. A ponents are nameless, and no matter how keen our ex-
mirage in the desert is intriguing chiefly because it is perience may be, it is hard to form an idea of anything
rare. A mirror image, being common, is not an object that has no name. It has no handle for the mind. This
of wonder, and in itself, just as an image, does not thrill has led many learned people to believe that feeling is a
us. But the dynamic image created in dancing has a formless affair, that it has causes which may be deter-
different character. It is more than a perceivable entity; mined, and effects that have to be dealt with, but that
this apparition, given to the eye, or to the ear and eye, in itself it is irrational—a disturbance in the organism,
and through them to our whole responsive sensibility, with no structure of its own.
strikes us as something charged with feeling. Yet this Yet subjective existence has a structure; it is not only
feeling is not necessarily what any or all of the dancers met from moment to moment, but can be conceptually
6 7
—«1
known, reflected on, imagined and symbolically ex- solutions of artistic problems always intrigue me. The
pressed in detail and to a great depth. Only it is not our philosophical question that I would peel out of its many
usual medium, discourse—communication by language wrappings is: What does it mean to express one's idea of
—that serves to express what we know of the life of some inward or "subjective" process?
feeling. There are logical reasons why language fails It means to make an outward image of this inward
to meet this purpose, reasons I will not try to explain process, for oneself and others to see; that is, to give the
now. The important fact is that what language does not subjective events an objective symbol. Every work of
readily do—present the nature and patterns of sensitive art is such an image, whether it be a dance, a statue, a
and emotional life—is done by works of art. Such works picture, a piece of music, or a work of poetry. It is an
are expressive forms, and what they express is the nature outward showing of inward nature, an objective presen-
of human feeling. tation of subjective reality; and the reason that it can
So we have played our second gambit, answering the symbolize things of the inner life is that it has the same
second question: What is the work of art for—the dance, kinds of relations and elements. This is not true of the
the virtual dynamic image? T o express its creator's ideas material structure; the physical materials of a dance do
of immediate, felt, emotive life. T o set forth directly not have any direct similarity to the structure of emotive
what feeling is like. A work of art is a composition of life; it is the created image that has elements and patterns
tensions and resolutions, balance and unbalance, rhyth- like the life of feeling. But this image, though it is a
mic coherence, a precarious yet continuous unity. Life created apparition, a pure appearance, is objective; it
is a natural process of such tensions, balances, rhythms; seems to be charged with feeling because its form ex-
it is these that we feel, in quietness or emotion, as the presses the very nature of feeling. Therefore, it is an
pulse of our own living. In the work of art they are objectification of subjective life, and so is every other
expressed, symbolically shown, each aspect of feeling work of art.
developed as one develops an idea, fitted together for If works of art are all alike in this fundamental respect,
clearest presentation. A dance is not a symptom of a why have we several great domains of art, such as paint-
dancer's feeling, but an expression of its composer's ing and music, poetry and dance? Something makes them
knowledge of many feelings. so distinct from each other that people with superb talent
The third problem on the docket—how is a dance for one may have none for another. A sensible person
created?—is so great that one has to break it down into would not go to Picasso to learn dancing or to Hindemith
several questions. Some of these are practical questions to be taught painting. How does dancing, for instance,
of technique—how to produce this or that effect. They differ from music or architecture or drama? It has rela-
concern many of you but not me, except in so far as tions with all of them. Yet it is none of them.
8 9
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What makes the distinction among the several great ture. That is what makes dance a different art from all
orders of art is another of those problems that arise in the others. But as Space, Events, Time, and Powers are
their turn, uninvited, once you start from a central ques- all interrelated in reality, so all the arts are linked by
tion; and the fact that the question of what is created intricate relations, different among different ones. That
leads from one issue to another in this natural and sys- is a big subject.
tematic way makes me think it really is central. The dis- Another problem which naturally presents itself here
tinction between dancing and all of the other great arts is the meaning of dance gesture; but we shall have to skip
—and of those from each other—lies in the stuff of which it. W e have had enough pursuit of meanings, and I know
the virtual image, the expressive form, is made. W e can- from experience that if you don't make an end of it, there
not go into any discussion of other kinds, but only re- is no end. But in dropping the curtain on this peep-show
flect a little further on our original query: What do of philosophy, I would like to call your attention to one
of those unexpected explanations of puzzling facts that
dancers create? What is a dance?
sometimes arise from philosophical reflection.
As I said before (so long before that you have probably
Curt Sachs, who is an eminent historian of music and
forgotten), what we see when we watch a dance is a
dance, remarks in his World History of Dance that,
display of interacting forces; not physical forces, like
strange as it may seem, the evolution of the dance as a
the weight that tips a scale or the push that topples a
high art belongs to pre-history. A t the dawn of civiliza-
column of books, but purely apparent forces that seem
tion, dance had already reached a degree of perfection
to move the dance itself. T w o people in a pas de deux
that no other art or science could match. Societies lim-
seem to magnetize each other; a group appears to be
ited to savage living, primitive sculpture, primitive archi-
animated by one single spirit, one Power. The stuff of
tecture, and as yet no poetry, quite commonly present
the dance, the apparition itself, consists of such non- the astonished ethnologist with a highly developed tradi-
physical forces, drawing and driving, holding and shap- tion of difficult, beautiful dancing. Their music apart
ing its life. The actual, physical forces that underlie it from the dance is nothing at all; in the dance it is elabo-
disappear. A s soon as the beholder sees gymnastics and rate. Their worship is dance. They are tribes of dancers.
arrangements, the work of art breaks, the creation fails. If you think of the dance as an apparition of interactive
As painting is made purely of spatial volumes—not Powers, this strange fact loses its strangeness. Every art
actual space-filling things but virtual volumes, created image is a purified and simplified aspect of the outer
solely for the eye—and music is made of passage, move- world, composed by the laws of the inner world to ex-
ments of time, created by tone—so dance creates a world press its nature. As one objective aspect of the world
of powers, made visible b y the unbroken fabric of ges- after another comes to people's notice, the arts arise.
10
PROBLEMS OF ART
Each makes its own image of outward reality to objectify

inward reality, subjective life, feeling.
Primitive men live in a world of demonic Powers.
Subhuman or superhuman, gods or spooks or impersonal
magic forces, good or bad luck that dwells in things like
an electric charge, are the most impressive realities of the
savage's world. The drive to artistic creation, which EXPRESSIVENESS
seems to be deeply primitive in all human beings, first
begets its forms in the image of these all-surrounding
Powers. The magic circle around the altar or the totem
pole, the holy space inside the Kiwa or the temple, is the
natural dance floor. There is nothing unreasonable about
that. In a world perceived as a realm of mystic Powers,
the first created image is the dynamic image; the first W H E N we talk about " A r t " with a capital "A"—that is,
objectification of human nature, the first true art, is about any or all of the arts: painting, sculpture, architec-
Dance. ture, the potter's and goldsmith's and other designers'
arts, music, dance, poetry, and prose fiction, drama and
film—it is a constant temptation to say things about
" A r t " in this general sense that are true only in one
special domain, or to assume that what holds for one
art must hold for another. For instance, the fact that
music is made for performance, for presentation to the
ear, and is simply not the same thing when it is given
only to the tonal imagination of a reader silently perusing
the score, has made some aestheticians pass straight to
the conclusion that literature, too, must be physically
heard to be fully experienced, because words are origin-
ally spoken, not written; an obvious parallel, but a
careless and, I think, invalid one. It is dangerous to set
up principles by analogy, and generalize from a single
consideration.
But it is natural, and safe enough, to ask analogous
12
'5
PROBLEMS OF ART EXPRESSIVENESS
questions: "What is the function of sound in music? A work of art is an expressive form created for our
What is the function of sound in poetry? What is the perception through sense or imagination, and what it
function of sound in prose composition? What is the expresses is human feeling. The word "feeling" must be
function of sound in drama?" The answers may be quite taken here in its broadest sense, meaning everything that
heterogeneous; and that is itself an important fact, a can be felt, from physical sensation, pain and comfort,
guide to something more than a simple and sweeping excitement and repose, to the most complex emotions,
theory. Such findings guide us to exact relations and intellectual tensions, or the steady feeling-tones of a
abstract, variously exemplified basic principles. conscious human life. In stating what a work of art is, I
At present, however, we are dealing with principles have just used the words "form," "expressive," and
that have proven to be the same in all the arts, when each "created"; these are key words. One at a time, they will
kind of art—plastic, musical, balletic, poetic, and each keep us engaged.
major mode, such as literary and dramatic writing, or Let us consider first what is meant, in this context, by
painting, sculpturing, building plastic shapes—has been a form. The word has many meanings, all equally legiti-
studied in its own terms. Such candid study is more mate for various purposes; even in connection with art
rewarding than the usual passionate declaration that all it has several. It may, for instance—and often does—de-
the arts are alike, only their materials differ, their prin- note the familiar, characteristic structures known as the
ciples are all the same, their techniques all analogous, etc. sonnet form, the sestina, or the ballad form in poetry,
That is not only unsafe, but untrue. It is in pursuing the the sonata form, the madrigal, or the symphony in music,
differences among them that one arrives, finally, at a the contredance or the classical ballet in choreography,
point where no more differences appear; then one has and so on. This is not what I mean; or rather, it is only a
found, not postulated, their unity. A t that deep level very small part of what I mean. There is another sense
there is only one concept exemplified in all the different in which artists speak of "form" when they say, for
arts, and that is the concept of Art. instance, "form follows function," or declare that the
The principles that obtain wholly and fundamentally one quality shared by all good works of art is "significant
in every kind of art are few, but decisive; they determine form," or entitle a book The Problem of Form in Paint-
what is art, and what is not. Expressiveness, in one ing and Sculpture, or The Life of Forms in Art, or
definite and appropriate sense, is the same in all art works Search for Form. They are using "form" in a wider
of any kind. What is created is not the same in any two sense, which on the one hand is close to the commonest,
distinct arts—this is, in fact, what makes them distinct— popular meaning, namely just the shape of a thing, and
but the principle of creation is the same. And "living on the other hand to the quite unpopular meaning it has
form" means the same in all of them. in science and philosophy, where it designates something
*4
more abstract; "form" in its most abstract sense means But what is the same in the big violet shade and the
structure, articulation, a whole resulting from the rela little green one? Nothing but the interrelations among
tion of mutually dependent factors, or more precisely, their respective various dimensions. They are not "the
the way that whole is put together. same" even in their spatial properties, for none of their
The abstract sense, which is sometimes called "logical actual measures are alike; but their shapes are congruent.
form," is involved in the notion of expression, at least Their respective spatial factors are put together in the
the kind of expression that characterizes art. That is same way, so they exemplify the same form.
why artists, when they speak of achieving "form," use It is really astounding what complicated abstractions
the word with something of an abstract connotation, we make in our ordinary dealing with forms—that is
even when they are talking about a visible and tangible to say, through what twists and transformations we
art object in which that form is embodied. recognize the same logical form. Consider the similarity
The more recondite concept of form is derived, of of your two hands. Put one on the table, palm down,
course, from the naive one, that is, material shape. Per superimpose the other, palm down, as you may have
haps the easiest way to grasp the idea of "logical form" superimposed cut-out geometric shapes in school—they
is to trace its derivation. are not alike at all. But their shapes are exact opposites.
Let us consider the most obvious sort of form, the Their respective shapes fit the same description, provided
shape of an object, say a lampshade. In any department that the description is modified by a principle of applica
store you will find a wide choice of lampshades, mostly tion whereby the measures are read one way for one
monstrosities, and what is monstrous is usually their hand and the other way for the other—like a timetable
shape. You select the least offensive one, maybe even a in which the list of stations is marked: "Eastbound, read
good one, but realize that the color, say violet, will not down; Westbound, read up."
fit into your room; so you look about for another shade As the two hands exemplify the same form with a
of the same shape but a different color, perhaps green. principle of reversal understood, so the list of stations
In recognizing this same shape in another object, possi describes two ways of moving, indicated by the advice to
bly of another material as well as another color, you "read down" for one and "read up" for the other. W e
have quite naturally and easily abstracted the concept of can all abstract the common element in these two
this shape from your actual impression of the first lamp respective trips, which is called the route. With a return
shade. Presently it may occur to you that this shade is ticket we may return only by the same route. The same
too big for your lamp; you ask whether they have this principle relates a mold to the form of the thing that
same shade (meaning another one of this shape) in a is cast in it, and establishes their formal correspondence,
smaller size. The clerk understands you. or common logical form.
16
Π
So far we have considered only objects—lampshades, deflected or dried up, there remains the river bed, some-
hands, or regions of the earth—as having forms. These times cut deeply in solid stone. That bed is shaped by the
have fixed shapes; their parts remain in fairly stable flow, and records as graven lines the currents that have
relations to each other. But there are also substances that ceased to exist. Its shape is static, but it expresses the
have no definite shapes, such as gases, mist, and water, dynamic form of the river. Again, we have two con-
which take the shape of any bounded space that contains gruent forms, like a cast and its mold, but this time the
them. The interesting thing about such amorphous congruence is more remarkable because it holds between
fluids is that when they are put into violent motion they a dynamic form and a static one. That relation is im-
do exhibit visible forms, not bounded by any container. portant; we shall be dealing with it again when we come
Think of the momentary efflorescence of a bursting to consider the meaning of "living form" in art.
rocket, the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb, the The congruence of two given perceptible forms is not
funnel of water or dust screwing upward in a whirl- always evident upon simple inspection. The common
wind. The instant the motion stops, or even slows beyond
logical form they both exhibit may become apparent
a certain degree, those shapes collapse and the apparent
only when you know the principle whereby to relate
"thing" disappears. They are not shapes of things at all,
them, as you compare the shapes of your hands not by
but forms of motions, or dynamic forms.
direct correspondence, but by correspondence of op-
Some dynamic forms, however, have more permanent posite parts. Where the two exemplifications of the
manifestations, because the stuff that moves and makes single logical form are unlike in most other respects one
them visible is constantly replenished. A waterfall seems needs a rule for matching up the relevant factors of one
to hang from the cliff, waving streamers of foam. Actu- with the relevant factors of the other; that is to say, a
ally, of course, nothing stays there in mid-air; the water rule of translation, whereby one instance of the logical
is always passing; but there is more and more water form is shown to correspond formally to the other.
taking the same paths, so we have a lasting shape made The logical form itself is not another thing, but an
and maintained by its passage—a permanent dynamic abstract concept, or better an abstractable concept. W e
form. A quiet river, too, has dynamic form; if it stopped usually don't abstract it deliberately, but only use it,
flowing it would either go dry or become a lake. Some as we use our vocal cords in speech without first learning
twenty-five hundred years ago, Heracleitos was struck
all about their operation and then applying our knowl-
by the fact that you cannot step twice into the same
edge. Most people perceive intuitively the similarity of
river at the same place—at least, if the river means the
their two hands without thinking of them as conversely
water, not its dynamic form, the flow.
related; they can guess at the shape of the hollow inside
When a river ceases to flow because the water is a wooden shoe from the shape of a human foot, without
18 19
PROBLEMS OF ART
any abstract study of topology. But the first time they in it. A child interested in a globe will not say: "This
see a map in the Mercator projection—with parallel lines means the earth," but: "Look, this is the earth." A
similar identification of symbol and meaning underlies
of longitude, not meeting at the poles—they find it hard
the widespread conception of holy names, of the physical
to believe that this corresponds logically to the circular
efficacy of rites, and many other primitive but culturally
map they used in school, where the meridians bulged
persistent phenomena. It has a bearing on our perception
apart toward the equator and met at both poles. The
of artistic import; that is why I mention it here.
visible shapes of the continents are different on the two
maps, and it takes abstract thinking to match up the The most astounding and developed symbolic device
humanity has evolved is language. B y means of language
two representations of the same earth. If, however, they
we can conceive the intangible, incorporeal things we
have grown up with both maps, they will probably see
call our ideas, and the equally inostensible elements of
me geographical relationships either way with equal
our perceptual world that we call facts. It is by virtue of
ease, because these relationships are not copied by either
language that we can think, remember, imagine, and
map, but expressed, and expressed equally well by both;
finally conceive a universe of facts. W e can describe
for the two maps are different projections of the same
things and represent their relations, express rules of their
logical form, which the spherical earth exhibits in still
interactions, speculate and predict and carry on a long
another—that is, a spherical—projection.
symbolizing process known as reasoning. And above
An expressive form is any perceptible or imaginable
all, we can communicate, by producing a serried array
whole that exhibits relationships of parts, or points, or
of audible or visible words, in a pattern commonly
even qualities or aspects within the whole, so that it
known, and readily understood to reflect our multi-
may be taken to represent some other whole whose ele-
farious concepts and percepts and their interconnections.
ments have analogous relations. The reason for using
This use of language is discourse; and the pattern of dis-
such a form as a symbol is usually that the thing it
course is known as discursive form. It is a highly versa-
represents is not perceivable or readily imaginable. W e
tile, amazingly powerful pattern. It has impressed itself
cannot see the earth as an object. W e let a map or a
on our tacit thinking, so that we call all systematic re-
little globe express the relationships of places on the earth, flection "discursive thought." It has made, far more than
and think about the earth by means of it. The under- most people know, the very frame of our sensory ex-
standing of one thing through another seems to be a perience—the frame of objective facts in which we
deeply intuitive process in the human brain; it is so natu- carry on the practical business of life.
ral that we often have difficulty in distinguishing the sym-
bolic expressive form from what it conveys. The symbol Yet even the discursive pattern has its limits of use-
fulness. A n expressive form can express any complex of
seems to be the thing itself, or contain it, or be contained
20 21
conceptions that, via some rule of projection, appears simplification that makes scientific treatment possible to
congruent with it, that is, appears to be of that form. a considerable extent; but we may already be close to the
Whatever there is in experience that will not take the limit of its usefulness, that is, close to the point where
impress—directly or indirectly—of discursive form, is its simplicity becomes an obstacle to further question
not discursively communicable or, in the strictest sense, ing and discovery instead of the revealing, ever-suitable
logically thinkable. It is unspeakable, ineffable; accord logical projection it was expected to be.
ing to practically all serious philosophical theories today, Whatever resists projection into the discursive form
it is unknowable. of language is, indeed, hard to hold in conception, and
Yet there is a great deal of experience that is knowable, perhaps impossible to communicate, in the proper and
not only as immediate, formless, meaningless impact, strict sense of the word "communicate." But fortunately
but as one aspect of the intricate web of life, yet defies our logical intuition, or form-perception, is really much
discursive formulation, and therefore verbal expression: more powerful than we commonly believe, and our
that is what we sometimes call the subjective aspect of knowledge—genuine knowledge, understanding—is con
experience, the direct feeling of it—what it is like to be siderably wider than our discourse. Even in the use of
waking and moving, to be drowsy, slowing down, or to language, if we want to name something that is too new
be sociable, or to feel self-sufficient but alone; what it to have a name (e.g., a newly invented gadget or a
feels like to pursue an elusive thought or to have a big
idea. All such directly felt experiences usually have no
it
Λ·Κ/
newly discovered creature), or want to express a rela-
tionship for which there is no verb or other connective
names—they are named, if at all, for the outward condi S ( word, we resort to metaphor; we mention it or describe
tions that normally accompany their occurrence. Only it as something else, something analogous. The principle
the most striking ones have names like "anger," "hate," of metaphor is simply the principle of saying one thing
"love," "fear," and are collectively called "emotion." and meaning another, and expecting to be understood
But we feel many things that never develop into any to mean the other. A metaphor is not language, it is an
designable emotion. The ways we are moved are as idea expressed by language, an idea that in its turn func
various as the lights in a forest; and they may intersect, tions as a symbol to express something. It is not dis
sometimes without cancelling each other, take shape and cursive and therefore does not really make a statement
dissolve, conflict, explode into passion, or be transfigured. of the idea it conveys; but it formulates a new con
ception for our direct imaginative grasp.
All these inseparable elements of subjective reality com
pose what we call the "inward life" of human beings. Sometimes our comprehension of a total experience is
The usual factoring of that life-stream into mental, emo mediated by a metaphorical symbol because the experi
tional, and sensory units is an arbitrary scheme of ence is new, and language has words and phrases only for
22 23
PROBLEMS OF ART
familiar notions. Then an extension of language will ing about the phenomena of subjective life, and some- ·φ^*ί-
gradually follow the wordless insight, and discursive times simplifies the problem by saying they don't exist. • ^?
/ /
expression will supersede the non-discursive pristine Now, I believe the expression of feeling in a work of
symbol. This is, I think, the normal advance of human art—the function that makes the work an expressive
thought and language in that whole realm of knowledge form—is not symptomatic at all. An artist working on a
where discourse is possible at all. tragedy need not be in personal despair or violent up
But the symbolic presentation of subjective reality for heaval; nobody, indeed, could work in such a state of
contemplation is not only tentatively beyond the reach mind. His mind would be occupied with the causes of
of language—that is, not merely beyond the words we his emotional upset. Self-expression does not require
have; it is impossible in the essential frame of language. composition and lucidity; a screaming baby gives his
That is why those semanticists who recognize only dis feeling far more release than any musician, but we don't
course as a symbolic form must regard the whole life go into a concert hall to hear a baby scream; in fact, if
of feeling as formless, chaotic, capable only of sympto that baby is brought in we are likely to go out. W e don't
matic expression, typified in exclamations like " A h ! " want self-expression.
"Ouch!" " M y sainted aunt!" They usually do believe A work of art presents feeling (in the broad sense I
that art is an expression of feeling, but that "expression" mentioned before, as everything that can be felt) for our
in art is of this sort, indicating that the speaker has an contemplation, making it visible or audible or in some
emotion, a pain, or other personal experience, perhaps way perceivable through a symbol, not inferable from a
symptom. Artistic form is congruent with the dynamic
also giving us a clue to the general kind of experience it
forms of our direct sensuous, mental, and emotional life;
is—pleasant or unpleasant, violent or mild—but not
works of art are projections of "felt life," as Henry
setting that piece of inward life objectively before us so
James called it, into spatial, temporal, and poetic struc
we may understand its intricacy, its rhythms and shifts
tures. T h e y are images of feeling, that formulate it for
of total appearance. The differences in feeling-tones or
our cognition. What is artistically good is whatever
other elements of subjective experience are regarded as
articulates and presents feeling to our understanding.
differences in quality, which must be felt to be appre
Artistic forms are more complex than any other sym
ciated. Furthermore, since we have no intellectual access
bolic forms we know. T h e y are, indeed, not abstractable
to pure subjectivity, the only way to study it is to study from the works that exhibit them. W e may abstract a
the symptoms of the person who is having subjective shape from an object that has this shape, by disregarding
experiences. This leads to physiological psychology—a color, weight and texture, even size; but to the total
very important and interesting field. But it tells us noth- effect that is an artistic form, the color matters, the
24
25
PROBLEMS OF ART
thickness of lines matters, and the appearance of texture

and weight. A given triangle is the same in any position,
but to an artistic form its location, balance, and sur-
roundings are not indifferent. Form, in the sense in which
artists speak of "significant form" or "expressive form,"
is not an abstracted structure, but an apparition; and the
vital processes of sense and emotion that a good work CREATION
of art expresses seem to the beholder to be directly con-
tained in it, not symbolized but really presented. The
congruence is so striking that symbol and meaning appear
as one reality. Actually, as one psychologist who is also
a musician has written, "Music sounds as feelings feel."
And likewise, in good painting, sculpture, or building,
balanced shapes and colors, lines and masses look as emo- IT is customary to speak of an artist's work as "creation."
tions, vital tensions and their resolutions feel. A painter "creates" a painting. A dancer "creates" a
An artist, then, expresses feeling, but not in the way a dance, a poet "creates" a poem. If he slumps and gets
politician blows off steam or a baby laughs and cries. He nothing done he is apt to worry about not being "crea-
formulates that elusive aspect of reality that is commonly tive" (which usually makes him even more uncreative).
taken to be amorphous and chaotic; that is, he objectifies But when a factory worker, say a candy dipper or a
the subjective realm. What he expresses is, therefore, weaver, has a sore throat and stays away from work he
not his own actual feelings, but what he knows about is not called "uncreative"; in fact, he may take that
human feeling. Once he is in possession of a rich sym- professionally idle day at home to play piano—which
bolism, that knowledge may actually exceed his entire doesn't produce any material object at all—and then he
personal experience. A work of art expresses a con- is said to be creating music. Why? W h y is a piece of
ception of life, emotion, inward reality. But it is neither music a creation and a shoe usually just a product? The
a confessional nor a frozen tantrum; it is a developed distinction, though it is protested by some philosophers
metaphor, a non-discursive symbol that articulates what who are anxious champions of democracy, like John
is verbally ineffable—the logic of consciousness itself. Dewey, is a commonly accepted one. An automobile is
not created on the conveyor belt, but manufactured. W e
don't create bricks, aluminum pots, or toothpaste; we
simply make such things. But we create works of art.
26 21
PROBLEMS OF ART
CREATION
There is a special justification for the term; the distinc- There are certain merely apparent objects in nature:
tion has nothing to do with undemocratic valuations. rainbows, mirages, and simple reflections in still water
Creation is not properly a value-concept, as it is taken or on other shiny surfaces. The most familiar instances
to be by milliners and caterers who speak of their are images, in mirrors which we construct for the pur-
products as "creations." Some pathetic artists create pose of getting reflections. It is the mirror that has made
mediocre or even quite vulgarly sentimental pictures, physicists recognize and describe this sort of space,
banal songs, stupid dances, or very bad poems; but they which by the usual standard of practical experience is
create them. illusory; they call it virtual space. Let us borrow that
The difference between creation and other productive technical term, "virtual."
work is this: an ordinary object, say a shoe, is made by A picture is an apparition of virtual objects (whether
putting pieces of leather together; the pieces were there they be "things" in the ordinary sense or just colored
before. The shoe is a construction of leather. It has a volumes), in a virtual space. But it differs from a re-
special shape and use and name, but it is still an article flection in a quite radical way. there is nothing in actual
of leather, and is thought of as such. A picture is made space (by actual space I mean our normal space, in which
by deploying pigments on a piece of canvas, but the we act) related to the painting as a physical object is
picture is not a pigment-and-canvas structure. The related to its own mirror image. The space behind the
picture that emerges from the process is a structure of mirror is really an indirect appearance of actual space.
space, and the space itself is an emergent whole of shapes, But the virtual space of a painting is created. The canvas
visible colored volumes. Neither the space nor the things existed before, the pigments existed before; they have
in it were in the room before. Pigments and canvas are only been moved about, arranged to compose a new
not in the pictorial space; they are in the space of the physical object, that the painter calls "my big canvas"
room, as they were before, though we no longer find or "that little new canvas." But the picture, the spatial
them there by sight without a great effort of attention. illusion, is new in the sense that it never existed before,
For touch they are still there. But for touch there is no anywhere, nor did any of its parts. The illusion of space
pictorial space. is created.
The picture, in short, is an apparition. It is there for A s soon as you mention the word "illusion" in connec-
our eyes but not for our hands, nor does its visible space, tion with art you are likely to start a storm of protests
however great, have any normal accoustical properties against things you haven't said, but are assumed to think
for our ears. The apparently solid volumes in it do not and expected to say. "But art isn't mere illusion! It's
meet our common-sense criteria for the existence of the highest Reality!" "But art isn't mere make-believe!"
objects; they exist for vision alone. The whole picture "Beauty is Truth, not mere fancy!" "But art as illusion
is a piece of purely visual space. It is nothing but a vision. means mere escapism!" And so forth. Naturally, I should
28
29
CREATION
PROBLEMS OF ART
like to avoid a word that conjures up so much mereness. movements, in short: the appearances of things without
Yet I have to talk about the subject, for illusion is an being aware of them as particular appearances. W e use
important principle in art—a cardinal principle, whereby them only as indications of the things in question. If
artistic abstraction is achieved without any process of you come into a room in normal indoor daylight, you
generalization such as we use in reaching scientific may see that it contains, say, a red-covered sofa, but you
abstractions. The role of illusion is an interesting one, do not notice the gradations of red or even the appear-
and has nothing to do with make-believe, deception, or ance of other colors caused by the way the light strikes
escape from truth. It serves the serious, paramount pur- that sofa at that moment. An eminent art critic, the late
pose of art, which Flaubert declared to be "expression Roger Fry, noted this fact many years ago, and expressed
of the Idea." He could not further define what he it so well that I shall read you what he said:
meant by "the Idea"; but, as I sought to demonstrate "The needs of our actual life are so imperative that
in the preceding lecture, this elusive "Idea" is the con- the sense of vision becomes highly specialized in their
ception of subjective experience, the life of feeling. service. With an admirable economy we learn to see
There, also, I remarked that when artists speak of only so much as is needful for our purposes; but this is
form they mean something abstract, though a work of in fact very little. . . . In actual life the normal person
art is a concrete, unique entity. They mean something really only reads the labels as it were, on the objects
more than physical shape, even where shape happens to around him and troubles no further. Almost all the
be its chief element. The form created by a sculptor is things which are useful in any way put on more or less
deeply influenced by the color and texture of the this cap of invisibility. It is only when an object exists
material he has shaped. A casting has to be carefully in our lives for no other purpose than to be seen that we
toned and finished if it is to be more than a shape—if it really look at it, as for instance at a China ornament or
is to present itself as an expressive form. W e have to a precious stone, and towards such even the most normal
see in it the symbolic possibilities of "form" in the person adopts to some extent the artistic attitude of pure
larger sense, logical form. But logical form is not vision abstracted from necessity."
visible, it is conceptual. It is abstract; yet we do not The surest way to abstract the element of sensory
abstract it from the work of art that embodies it. Some- appearance from the fabric of actual life and its complex
how in perceiving the work, we see it not as having an interests, is to create a sheer vision, a datum that is
expressive form, but as being one. If we see with an nothing but appearance and is, indeed, clearly and
artist's eye, as appreciative people do, we see this con- avowedly an object only for sight (let us limit our-
crete entity abstractly. H o w is that brought about? selves, for the moment, to pictorial art). That is the
Ordinarily, we see the shapes, configurations, colors, • purpose of illusion in art: it effects at once the abstrac-
30 3'
PROBLEMS OF ART CREATION
rion of the visual form and causes one to see it as such. level—when it still deals with quite concrete things,
What prevents us from treating the volumes of light like apples or cubes of wood—it is always general.
and color that we see in a picture chiefly as "labels" of Discursive language—or better, with prudent regard for
things, is that there are no things, and we know it. That the theory of poetry, language used for discourse—is
knowledge liberates us, without any effort on our part, intrinsically general. Wider and wider generalization
from what Coleridge called "the world of selfish solici- is the method of scientific abstraction. I cannot eluci-
tude and anxious interest" and makes it natural for the date that statement any further without digressing from
beholder of a work to see what it really looks like. In our present theme, and it is not necessary in this con-
looking at a picture, we neither believe nor make believe nection to understand it; the point I wish to make is
that there is a person or a bridge or a basket of fruit in simply that in science one attains abstract concepts by
front of us. W e do not pass intellectually beyond the way of more and more general ideas.
vision of space at all, but understand it as an apparition. Art does not generalize. If an artist is to abstract a
The normal use of vision, which F r y talked about, is "significant form" (to use Clive Bell's famous phrase)
suspended by the circumstance that we know this space he has to make the abstraction directly by means of one
to be virtual, and neither believe nor disbelieve in the concrete incarnation. This concrete entity is going to
existence of the objects in it. So we see it as a pure be the sole symbol of its import. He must, then, have
perceptual form, created and articulated by all the very powerful means to emphasize the expressive form,
visible elements in it: an autonomous, formed space. which makes the work a symbol, and to show up that
T o create a sensory illusion is, then, the artist's normal form so forcibly that we perceive it, without seeing it
way of making us see abnormally, abstractly. He ab- repeated from instance to instance, but just in this one
stracts the visual elements of experience by cancelling exemplification, this organized unit of space. T o make
out all other elements, leaving us nothing to notice us not construe it, but see it as a form expressing vital
except what his virtual space looks like. This way of and emotive conceptions, he has to uncouple it from
achieving abstraction is different from the usual way nature, which we see in a different way, namely the way
practiced in logic, mathematics, or science. In those Roger F r y so aptly described. He does it by creating a
realms, i.e., the realms of discursive thinking, the cus- pure image of space, a virtual space that has no con-
tomary way to pass from concrete experience to concep- tinuity with the actual space in which he stands; its
tions of abstract, systematic relation patterns is through only relation to actual space is one of difference, other-
a process of generalization—letting the concrete, di- ness.
rectly known thing stand for all things of its kind. Even This characteristic way in which the artist presents
when scientific thought has not reached the abstract his formal structure in a single exemplification is, I
32 33
think, what makes it impossible to divorce the logical Pictorial space is a symbolic space, and its visual organi-
form from its one embodiment or expression. W e never zation is a symbol of vital feeling.
pass beyond the work of art, the vision, to something This brings us to the second point of major interest
separately thinkable, the logical form, and from this to in dealing with the problem of creation: the question of
the meaning it conveys, a feeling that has this same what makes the different arts as different as we find
form. The dynamic form of feeling is seen in the picture, them. That question naturally arises as soon as we try
not through it mediately; the feeling itself seems to be to apply the theory of illusion which I have just pre-
in the picture. Symbolic form, symbolic function, and sented, to other than plastic arts. How can one extend
symbolized import are all telescoped into one experience, the concept of "virtual space" to music? Or to poetry?
a perception of beauty and an intuition of significance. T o the novelist's art? What role does it play there?
It is unfortunate for epistemology that a mental process The concept of "virtual space" is not simply trans-
can be so complex and concentrated; but perception ferable from the aesthetics of painting to the aesthetics
of artistic import, or what we commonly call "apprecia- of music. There is such a thing as virtual space in music,
tion," certainly seems to be such a distillate of intuition, but it does not hold the position of central importance
and the heroic feat of making logical form evident in there that it holds in the visual arts. But we have a
a single presentation accounts for the fact that we feel corresponding central concept; music also has its unreal,
rather than know it, conceive vital experience in terms created "stuff" of which its forms are made.
of it, without completing any conscious logical abstrac- In painting, virtual space may be called the primary
tion. illusion, not because it is what the artist makes first,
All this explanation of the role played by illusion in before he creates forms in it—it comes with the lines
artistic abstraction has undoubtedly seemed very difficult and colors, not before them—but because it is what is
(which it is); the upshot of it, however, is that illusion alivays created in a work of pictorial art. Even bad
in the arts is not pretense, make-believe, improvement pictures create a picture space, otherwise we would not
on nature, or flight from reality; illusion is the "stuff" see them as pictures, but as spotted surfaces. A spotted
of art, the "stuff" out of which the semi-abstract yet surface is "bad" only if we feel called upon to clean it
unique and often sensuous expressive form is made. T o up. A picture is bad if it is inexpressive, dead.
call the art-image illusory is simply to say that it is not So far we have considered only pictures as plastic art;
material; it is not cloth and paint-smooches, but space there are, of course, other plastic works, notably sculp-
organized by balanced shapes with dynamic relations, tures and buildings. These forms do not so obviously
tensions and resolutions, among them. Actual space is create an illusion as pictures do. Yet they do exist for
not like that; it has no organic form, like pictorial space. vision in their own space, unrelated to the space of
34 35
CREATION
PROBLEMS OF ART
science or practicality; and without representing any- impression of motion by the fact that sound is caused
thing, they present themselves so forcibly to vision that by vibrations, which are physical motions. But the
they seem to exist for that sense alone. The virtual space motions of strings, membranes, or tubes are extremely
they create is not pictorial space, but a different mode of small, rapid, and repetitious; they are no more like the
movement of a simple melody toward its keynote than
spatial apparition. W e cannot possibly go into that matter
the spatial relations of pigments on a canvas are like
here. I merely mention it so as to forestall a misgiving
the relations of sky and breakers in a seascape. W e do
that would surely arise in every critic's mind were I to
not hear vibratory motions in music, but large linear
treat pictorial space as the sum and substance of all
movements, mounting harmonies, rhythms that are not
plastic art.
at all like physical oscillations. W e hear marching, flow-
Virtual space, however, in its various modes, is the
ing, or driving progressive motion. Yet in a musical
primary illusion of all such art. It is created in every
progression there is nothing that is displaced, that has
work that we recognize as plastic expression, and its
gone from somewhere to somewhere else. Musical move-
primary character defines the realm of plastic art.
ment is illusory, like volumes in pictorial space.
Music, too, has its primary illusion, which is created
whenever tonal materials beget a musical impression. A By means of this purely apparent movement, music
hasty sketch of so large a subject as the nature of music presents an auditory apparition of time; more precisely,
cannot sound very convincing, especially when it is of what one might call "felt time." Instead of vaguely
presented in parallel to a theory of painting; it is apt sensing time as we do through our own physical life-
processes, we hear its passage. But this passage is not a
to seem like a simple, somewhat pat analogy. Actually,
simple one-dimensional trickle of successive moments,
this whole theory of art stems from the problem of
as it is in the conceptual framework of classical physics
"meaning" in music.
with which we usually operate in practical life. Musical
Music also presents us with an obvious illusion, which
time is not at all like clock-time. It has a sort of volumi-
is so strong that despite its obviousness it is sometimes
nousness and complexity and variability that make it
unrecognized because it is taken for a real, physical
utterly unlike metrical time. That is because our direct
phenomenon: that is the appearance of movement. Music
experience of time is the passage of vital functions and
flows; a melody moves; a succession of tones is heard as
lived events, felt inwardly as tensions—somatic, emo-
a progression. The differences between successive tones
tional, and mental tensions, which have a characteristic
are steps, or jumps, or slides. Harmonies arise, and shift,
pattern. T h e y grow from a beginning to a point of
and move to resolutions. A complete section of a sonata
highest intensity, mounting either steadily or with vary-
is quite naturally called a "movement."
ing acceleration to a climax, then dissolving, or letting
People have often tried to explain this inescapable
36 37
go abruptly in sudden deflation, or merging with the new tensions. Also, in clearest demonstration of the dif-
rise or fall of some other, encroaching tension. ference between materials and elements, we hear some-
Since living beings are indescribably complex, the thing in music that does not exist outside of it at all:
tensions that compose the vital process are not simply sustained rest. If a figure ascends to a resting tone, the
successive, but have multiple, often incommensurable actual motion of the air is faster on that resting tone than
relations. They form a dense fabric in which most of anywhere else in the passage; but what we hear is
them are obscured; only a few dominant strains can changeless continuity in time, sustained rest.
exist consciously in any given phase. The others compose Sonorous moving forms—"tonend bewegte Formen,"
a qualitative rather than quantitative ingredient of as Hanslick said—are the elements of music. The
temporal experience. That is why subjective time seems materials of music, on the other hand, are sounds of a
to have density and volume as well as length, and force certain pitch, loudness, overtone mixture, and metro-
as well as rate of passage. The one-dimensional time nomic length. In artistic production, the composer's
of Newtonian physics, and its derivative, the time- materials must be completely swallowed up in the illu-
dimension in modern physical theory, are abstractions sion they create, in which henceforth we find only
from our experience of time. T h e y have tremendous illusory elements, but not—except through technical
social and intellectual advantages, but they are very interest and workmanlike attention—the arrangement of
specialized abstractions, and leave many aspects of our materials. The illusory elements are figures, motions, and
direct knowledge outside the realm of discursive thought what we call "colors," "spaces," tensions and resolutions,
which they dominate. resting tones, emptiness, beginnings and ends.
This theory of musical creation has an interesting coun- I think the confusion between materials and elements
terpart, namely the theory of musical (as against actual) is the crux of most difficulties in art theory, and even
hearing. If music is indeed time made audible, then that the cause of some practical errors that arise from super-
is what the auditor ought to hear: virtual movement, ficial theory. As long as you think of music in terms of
motion that exists only for the ear. N o tangible thing is arranged tonal material, you are ridden with all the
actually going from one place to another. But the traditional problems of what to allow or not to allow,
listener hears musical figures that move through a defi- of pure or impure music, hybrid arts, classical patterns
nite tonal range, from points of origin to points of and free combinations, and so on. But as soon as you
relative rest; he hears tonal qualities as intense as colors, think of it as moving tonal forms creating an organic,
steadily or briefly holding places in the stream. Melodies purely virtual image of subjective time in its passage,
and harmonic masses within it build up tensions like these problems evaporate. Anything belongs to music
growing emotions, and resolve them or merge them into that helps to make, sustain, and articulate the illusion;
3* 39
noises as well as tones, words, even dramatic actions. even, with apparent immediacy, a flow of life, feeling,
There is no impure music, but only good and bad music. and emotion in audible passage. Often the actual tonal
Bad music may be made of pure tones in quite orthodox materials are blended so as not to be separately heard, to
arrangement; good and absolutely pure music may need create a tone-quality in which strings and winds, for
the support of words, as plain chant does, or completely instance, are secret ingredients. The listener, untroubled
swallow actions and scenes, persons and decor, as Mo- by self-consciousness and an intellectual inferiority-
zart's operas do. complex, should hear what is created to be heard. I think
Furthermore, the belief that in order to express the greater part of a modern audience listening to con-
"modern feeling" you need new tone-producing devices, temporary music tend to listen so much for new har-
and that the modern composer has some obligation to monies and odd rhythms and for new tone-mixtures that
explore all the new sonorous possibilities that science they never receive the illusion of time made audible, and
puts at his disposal, seems to me to be fallacious. He has of its great movement and subordinate play of tensions,
the right to use any materials he likes; but even if he naively and musically at all.
wants to express emotional conditions of which his N o w in conclusion, let us return to our main topic.
forbears knew nothing, he may or may not need new Music unfolds in a virtual time created by sound, a
sounds. His purpose is to create new elements, and how dynamic flow given directly and, as a rule, purely to the
he will do it is a problem for his tonal imagination and ear. This virtual time, which is an image not of clock-
his conception of feeling. time, but of lived time, is the primary illusion of music.
But the moral of this disquisition is not for the com- In it melodies move and harmonies grow and rhythms
poser alone. The audience, too, is prone to be misled by prevail, with the logic of an organic living structure.
the reverberations of incoherent art theory that one gets Virtual time is to music what virtual space is to plastic
in program notes and criticism. Most auditors at con- art: its very stuff, organized by the tonal forms that
create it.
certs are sure they cannot understand the way modern
music is "put together." They think that in order to Every great order of art has its own primary illusion;
appreciate it they must be able to detect the structure, that is what sets the great orders apart. There are many
name the chords, recognize all its devices, and spot the criss-cross relations among them—relations between
instruments that are used in each passage. Such percep- music and poetry, between poetry and plastic design, and
so forth. T o insist ah initio that the fundamental distinc-
tion is really a natural result of shopwork, and also to
tions among the several art genders are unimportant
some extent of much concert-going; but it is not a
does not make their close interrelations more evident or
requisite for musical intuition. What the audience should
more lucid; on the contrary, it makes them inscrutable.
hear is musical elements—created moving forms, or
40
The unity of art is then asserted as an article of faith, apparition before us. W e perceive them when we see or
instead of a reasonable proposition, as I find it to be. hear or read the work, and they seem to be directly
But the principle of creation is the same in all the arts, contained in it, not symbolized by it. The work itself
even if that which is created differs from one to an- takes on the semblance of life: when artists speak of
other. Every work of art is wholly a creation; it does "living form" they mean something in art, not in biology.
not have illusory and actual elements commingling in But that is tomorrow's problem.
it. Materials are actual, but art elements are always
virtual; and it is elements that an artist composes into an
apparition, an expressive form.
Because this form is given either to just one sense, or
to imagination (as poetry is), or is given so forcibly
to sense that its other properties become irrelevant (as
a fine vase or a beautiful building presents itself so
emphatically to the eye that it acts like a vision), we
see this sensuous or poetic form in abstracto, that is, we
really perceive the form, instead of merely using it in
a half-conscious way as an indication of a physical thing
or a fact. The artistic abstraction of form for experience
is made by creating a pure apparition that has, or seems
to have, no practical involvements at all. That is the
cardinal function of illusion. Such illusion is neither
deception nor make-believe; it is exactly the opposite,
make-woi-believe, though it does not invite »«belief,
either. It just cancels the usual process of factual judg-
ment, and with it all inclination to go beyond the vision,
:he expressive form, to something else.
Once the work is seen purely as a form, its symbolic
character—its logical resemblance to the dynamic forms
of life—is self-evident. W e need not even take discursive
account of it; we see or hear unity, organic integrity,
development, growth, and feeling "expressed" in the
42
43
LIVING FORM
4
Well, maybe. Mobility? Yes, perhaps. Feeling? Oh yes r
certainly.
For a work to "contain feeling," as that phrase is
commonly used, is precisely to be alive, to have artistic
vitality, to exhibit "living form." W e discussed yester-
LIVING FORM day why a form that expresses feeling appears not
merely to connote it, as a meaning, but to contain it, as
a quality. Since, however, we know that for a work to
contain feeling is really to be an expressive form which
articulates feeling, we may well ask, at this point, why
such articulation requires a symbol having the appear-
ance of vital organization and autonomous life; and
O N E of the most widely used metaphors in the literature furthermore, how this appearance is achieved. For, cer-
of art is the metaphor of the living creature applied to tainly, works of art are not really organisms with
the artistic product. Every artist finds "life," "vitality," biological functions. Pictures do not really pulse and
or "livingness" in a good work of art. He refers to the breathe; sonatas do not eat and sleep and repair them-
"spirit" of a picture, not meaning the spirit in which it selves like living creatures, nor do novels perpetuate
was painted, but its own quality; and his first task is to their kind when they are left unread in a library. Yet the
"animate" his canvas. A n unsuccessful work is "dead." metaphors of "life" and "organic form" in art are so
Even a fairly good one may have "dead spots." What do strong that I have known a serious, reflective artist to
people mean when they speak as though a picture or a be actually shocked at such philistine statements as I
building or a sonata were a living and breathing creature? have just made, calling those terms metaphors.
Another metaphor of the studio, borrowed from Let us consider, first, what feeling and emotion have
the biological realm, is the familiar statement that every to do with organic life; secondly, what are the character-
art work must be organic. Most artists will not even istics of actual organisms; thirdly, what are the most
agree with a literal-minded critic that this is a metaphor. general features of artistic creation by virtue of which
"Organic" simply and directly refers, in their vocab- the semblance of life is produced, and finally, how this
ulary, to something characteristic of good pictures and semblance empowers the artist to imagine and articulate
statues, poems and plays, ballets and buildings and pieces so much of human mentality, emotion, and individual
of music. It does not refer to biological functions like experience as men of genius do in fact put before us.
digestion and circulation. But—breathing? Heartbeat? Sentience—the most elementary sort of consciousness
44 45
i
PROBLEMS OF ART LIVING FORM
—is probably an aspect of organic process. Perhaps the All living matter that we have identified as such is
first feeling is of the free flow or interruption of vital organic; living creatures are organisms. They are charac-
rhythms in the creature itself, as the whole organism terized by what we call organic process—the constant
interacts with the surrounding world. With higher burning-up and equally constant renewal of their sub-
phases of functional development, more specialized sen- stance. Every cell, and indeed every part of every cell
tience develops, too—sensations, distinct emotions rather (and the functionally distinct parts are infinitesimal), is
than total, undifferentiated excitements, desires in place perpetually breaking down, and perpetually being re-
of bodily discomfort, directed drives and complex placed. The cell, the tissue composed of diverse cells, the
instincts, and with every complication of activity a organ to which the tissue belongs, the organism that
richer subjective immediacy. subsumes the organ—that whole vast system is in un-
It is a misconception, I believe, to think of sentience ceasing flux. It actually has no sameness of material
as something caused by vital activities. It is not an effect, substance from second to second. It is always changing;
but an aspect of them; as the red of an apple is not caused and if the exchanges of matter stop for even a few sec-
by the apple, but is an aspect of the apple itself in its onds, the effect is cataclysmic; the system is destroyed.
mature phase. Sentience arises in vital functioning rather Life is gone.
than from it; life as such is sentient. Naturally, then, life An organism, which seems to be the most distinct and
as it is felt always resembles life as it is observed; and individual sort of thing in the world, is really not a
when we become aware of feeling and emotion as in- thing at all. Its individual, separate, thing-like existence
gredients in a non-physical nexus, the mind, they still is a pattern of changes; its unity is a purely functional
seem to lie close to the somatic and instinctive level of unity. But the integration of that functional whole is
our being. T h e y are, indeed, like high-lights on the so indescribably complex and intimate and profound
crests of the turbulent life-stream. Naturally, then, their that the self-identity of the higher organisms (that is,
basic forms are vital forms; their coming and going is the most elaborately integrated ones) is more convincing
in the pattern of growth and decline, not of mechanical than the self-identity of the most permanent material
occurrences; their mutual involvements reflect the mold concretion, such as a lump of lead or a stone. If you
of biological existence. If, therefore, a created sensuous reflect on this strange fact, you realize w h y human
symbol—a work of art—is to be in their image, it must identity is always felt to lie not so much in bodily
present itself somehow as a version, or projection, of permanence as in personality. It is a functional identity,
living process; it must be of a logical form that is com- a pattern of physical and mental process, a continuum of
mensurable with the essential forms of life. activity.
What are the distinctive features of life? What prop- Let us hark back, for a moment, to a concept that
erties divide living from non-living things? was discussed in the first lecture—the concept of dy-
41
namic form. You may remember that the example we any changes in the water supply, with hot and cold
considered there was a waterfall. You can photograph weather, etc.—but under steady conditions the waterfall
a waterfall with an ordinary little camera, if you stand does not grow, age, decline, and cease forever, as an
back enough, just as you can photograph a house or a organism does. If the water source fails, the fall stops,
mountain. The waterfall has a shape, moving somewhat, but with renewed supply it begins again.
its long streamers seeming to shift like ribbons in a An organism has an entirely different relation to the
wind, but its mobile shape is a permanent datum in the outside world from that of a simple dynamism like the
landscape, among rocks and trees and other things. Yet waterfall. It is also a dynamism, but not a stream; it con-
the water does not really ever stand before us. Scarcely tains a myriad of distinct activities represented by per-
a drop stays there for the length of one glance. The manent structures, and coinciding with each other in
material composition of the waterfall changes all the ways that seem a miracle of timing and complementa-
time; only the form is permanent; and what gives any tion. All its processes form a single system. In the higher
shape at all to the water is the motion. The waterfall organisms, certain very elaborate processes acquire con-
exhibits a form of motion, or a dynamic form. trol over the simpler and perhaps phylogenetically older
If you put a dot of color on the rim of a wheel and ones; in man, for instance, the nervous system is so in-
spin it, you see a colored circle instead of a dot. This volved with all the other organic functions that any
again is the form of the dot's motion—a purely dynamic extensive injury done to it is likely to disturb or even
form—made visible. abrogate the whole functional system. The organism is,
Vital form is always dynamic. An organism, like a to a great extent, inviolable if it is to exist at all. It can
waterfall, exists only while it keeps going. Its perma- undergo many changes, survive many accidents, but only
nence is not endurance of a material, but of a functional as long as the basic process of life goes on.
pattern. The most elementary feeling, therefore—one This basic process is the constant breaking down and
might say, the sheer sense of life—is a sense of that reconstitution of every living part. For an organism is
dialectic of permanence and change that governs the always taking in material that is not of its own system,
existence of every cell, every fibre in a living creature. splitting it up, and transforming some of it into living
That is the foundation of what Henry James called "felt matter. Concomitantly, some living matter is always
life." breaking down and resigning from the total activity. The
But dynamic form is not enough. A waterfall is not one process is growth, and the other decay. Every
an organism. The waterfall has no biography. It cuts organism is always both growing and decaying. When
its groove into the resisting rock; its own shape changes growth exceeds decay, the system increases (the process
somewhat with that process, and very much more with we commonly mean by "growth"); when they are
48 49
evenly balanced, it maintains itself; when decay has the the stem from the twig that bears it, and ends with the
ascendancy, it ages. Finally, growth stops all at once; apple's coming to rest somewhere. Its falling may include
the life is done, and decay quickly dissolves the whole its rolling on the ground, or we may call that another
structure. event, and say that after the apple fell it rolled. A t any
The character of inviolability and fragility marks all rate, what we identify as an event in nature (except for
living things. Even the most persistent—redwood trees, certain highly specialized, scientific purposes) is not
and very long-lived creatures like crocodiles—are always something instantaneous, but a change that is begun and
maintaining themselves precariously against ravaging in- completed.
fluences, from temperature-changes and bacterial blights A rhythmic pattern arises whenever the completion
to the brute hand of man. The nature of life is transient; of one distinct event appears as the beginning of another.
even without accident, it is a passage from youth to age, The classic example is the swinging of a pendulum. T h e
no matter what its span. momentum of its drop drives the weight upward in the
The reason why so complex a network of events as opposite direction, and builds up the potential energy
the life of an individual can possibly go on and on in a that will bring it down again; so the first swing prepares
continuous dynamic pattern is, that this pattern of events the second; the second swing was actually begun in the
is rhythmic. W e all know that many of our actions, like first one, and similarly, after that, each swing is prepared
walking, rowing, even wood-chopping and rug-beating, by the one before. The result is a rhythmical series. Or,
are more easily done when they are rhythmic. People consider the breaking of waves in a steady surf on a
usually think of rhythm as a succession of similar events beach: the momentum of the water drives it up the
at fairly short, even intervals of time; that is, they think beach, until that momentum is spent, and the slant of
of rhythm as periodic succession. But what about a tennis the shore causes the water to run seaward again; but the
player whose morions impress one as rhythmic? H e piling of the second, incoming wave is also sucking back
probably does not repeat a single action; even his step is the spent water, and making its return a downward
less metrical than that of a drunkard walking. What, rush, that stops the bottom part of the new wave and
then, is rhythm? causes it to break over itself. Here, again, is a rhythmic
It is, I think, something related to function rather than pattern. The completion of each breaker's history is
to time. What we call an event is not simply anything already the beginning of the next one's.
that goes on in an arbitrary segment of time. A n event In a living organism, practically all activities are
is a change in the world having a beginning and a com- rhythmically conditioned, sometimes interconnected not
pletion. T h e fall of an apple is the sort of thing we mean, only by one chain of events but by many, functioning in
ordinarily, by an event; it begins with the breaking of many different rhythmic relationships at once. The most
jo 5l
LIVING FORM
PROBLEMS OF ART
obvious rhythmic processes are, of course, heartbeat and more than a few moments, the organism collapses, lite
breath. In the heart, every systole starts a diastole, and stops. Therefore living form is inviolable form. And
vice versa. In breathing, the process starts all the rime finally, the law of living form is the dialectic pf growth
throughout the whole body; as the oxygen of a breath and decay, with its characteristic biographical phases.
is used up, it builds up the imperative need of oxygen In the higher organisms, secondary rhythms develop,
that is really the beginning of the new breath. This sort specialized responses to the surrounding world, tensions
of mutual conditioning is the law of organic function; and their resolutions within the system: emotions, de-
the more closely you look into the entire physiological sires, attentive perception and action. Finally, at the
process that constitutes the dynamic form we call "life," human level, instinct is largely replaced by intuition,
the more minutely, diversely, and elaborately rhythmic direct responses by symbolic responses—imagination,
it proves to be. In every cell, the very process of its memory, reason—and simple emotional excitement is
oxidation—its burning away, breaking down—is the superseded by the continuous, personal life of feeling.
condition that has already started the chemical change But all these typically human functions have evolved
which builds up its characteristic substance again. The from the deeper vital complex, and still exhibit its
rhythmic interaction is incredible. fundamental traits—its dynamism, inviolable unity, or-
ganization, rhythmic continuity, and growth. These are
Many fundamental rhythms in the world are periodic;
the principles of living form.
in fact, so many that periodicity is often taken to be the
essence of rhythm. But the view we have just taken of If art is, as I believe it is, the expression of human
rhythm as a functional involvement of successive events consciousness in a single metaphorical image, that image
makes periodic rhythms a special sort, despite their im- must somehow achieve the semblance of living form.
mense importance, and lets us see w h y a tennis player, All the principles we have just considered must have
a wheeling bird, and a modern dancer who does not their analogues in those of artistic creation. This is indeed
necessarily repeat any motion may exhibit rhythm, too. the case. But it must be remembered that analogous
principles are not identical. The semblance of life need
Living form, then, is in the first place dynamic form,
not be constructed on the same plan as life itself; a
that is, a form whose permanence is really a pattern of
device that serves to create a sense of change need not
changes. Secondly, it is organically constructed; its
involve any actual change, nor the most forcible pre-
elements are not independent parts, but interrelated, in-
sentation of growth any actual accumulation. Artistic
terdependent centers of activity—that is, organs.
form is a projection, not a copy. Consequently there is
Thirdly, the whole system is held together by rhythmic
no direct correlation between the constituents of an
processes; that is the characteristic unity of life. If its
organism and the elements in a work of art. Art has its
major rhythms are greatly disturbed, or suspended for
53
own laws, which are laws of expressiveness. Its own nent line; this line, too, expresses the motion of the
elements are all created forms, not material ingredients; object, though it is not physically a dynamic form like
such elements cannot be compared to physical factors, the circle made by the spinning dot. But such a line does
nor their functions to physical functions. Only their not naturally connote the thing that made it; what it
product—the expressive form, the work of art—has connotes is only the directedness of its motion. It is a
characteristics symbolically related to those of life itself. path; and in our seeing, every continuous line is a path,
There are countless devices in the arts for the creation though it need not be the path of any imagined thing.
or enhancement of "living form." In the brief hour of Lines, however, have another function, too: they are
a lecture we cannot do more than mention and illustrate divisions of space, contours that define volumes. Volumes
a few of the major resources that artists draw upon for are the stabilizing elements in our world. In virtual space,
this purpose. lines express both motion and rest; and as virtual space
As I said earlier today, our sense of change in perma- is a pure creation, the lines that articulate it create both
nence, the balance of becoming and passing, is one of motion and rest, and, moreover, create both at the same
the profoundest aspects of human consciousness. If we time. A contour—as the word itself tells—is a turn, or
look at even the most elementary forms of visual art— path, that carves out a space. The way a line is handled
say, a purely decorative design, a wavy line adorning makes it predominantly a dynamic or a static element, as
the rim of a pot, a repeated pattern on a cloth—the line, the case may be. A space created by lines is ipso facto
which is stationary, is said to "run" around the rim, and a temporal space, that is, a spatio-temporal form, which
the over-all design, if it is good, seems to spread out over may readily be molded to express the dialectic of perma-
the cloth from any point where we happen to start. Let nence and change which is characteristic of life.
us talk about the line. Let us take another basic principle of art, that artists
In talking about dynamic form we considered the and critics are forever talking about: organic structure.
effect of a dot of color on a rotating wheel: the little Obviously, a picture or a poem does not really have
dot is seen as a circle, an even, closed line. This line organs and vital functions. But something about artistic
expresses the form not of the dot, but of its motion. It structure exemplifies the principle of organization, too,
projects this dynamic form as an apparently fixed visual though not in the same way that natural organisms do.
datum, a circular line. Every element in a work of art is so involved with
The relationship between lines and motions of objects other elements in the making of the virtual object, the
rests upon the natural laws of our perception. Swift work, that when it is altered (as it may be—artists make
motions are actually seen as motionless lines. Objects many alterations after the composition is well under
that deposit a trail, like a crayon, leave an actual, perma- w a y ) one almost always has to follow up the alteration
54 55
LIVING FORM
PROBLEMS OF ART
"love" is the direct object of the same verb, and desig

in several directions, or simply sacrifice some desired
nates an emotion. And the two uses of love are in
effects. A key word in a poetic verse, for instance, has
juxtaposition, but differently emphasized by the metrical
literal sense, perhaps obvious metaphorical sense, emo
structure of the lines. They are different elements,
tional overtones, grammatical cognates, familiar and
intimately related, at once, by their apparent identity;
unfamiliar uses. Each of these different functions may
then by the shift of sense from one to the other which
relate it in a different way from any other. Let us take
makes them homonyms instead; by the fact that their
William Blake's very perfect little poem, "Love's
meanings, though distinct, are cognate; by the fact that
Secret," and examine the functions of a few words in it:
they both complete the sense of the same verb, "tell,"
Never seek to tell thy love, but in different ways. Finally, they serve in conjunction
Love that never told can be; to link the two lines in a special way, making them seem
For the gentle wind doth move like counterparts, a symmetrical pair. Symmetry is a
Silently, invisibly.
strong form; this purely formal strength of the first two
I told my love, I told my love, lines makes possible the erratic shift of thought in the
I told her all my heart, following verses, which is logically, of course, a com
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears. plete non sequitur introduced by the word "for." In the
Ah! she did depart! third line, another function of the word "love" (in its
first occurrence) comes to light: it has also prepared the
Soon after she was gone from me,
rhyme; and to save the poem from too much symmetry,
A traveller came by,
it is a near-rhyme.
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh. The use of "for" to link the first and second thoughts
is a bold construction; it creates the feeling of a rational
T h e first two lines exhibit three repetitions, but all of
connection where literally there is none; but it refers
different degrees. "Never" is exactly repeated, but
the wind's movements—"silently, invisibly"—directly to
stands in different relations to the respective lines; "tell"
love, and transforms them at a stroke into metaphors
is repeated in different grammatical form, at correspond
for its ineffable nature.
ing points in both lines; "love"—the key word—occurs
This many-sided involvement of every element with
in diametrically opposed positions, i.e., at the end of one
the total fabric of the poem is what gives it a semblance
line and the beginning of the next; and in the two clauses
of organic structure; like living substance, a work of art
which it dominates it has both different meaning and
is inviolable; break its elements apart, and they no longer
different syntactical value. The first "love" is the indirect
are what they were—the whole image is gone.
object of "tell" and designates a person; the second
Π
56
PROBLEMS OF ART
5
I wish w e could analyze all the leading principles; but
I have already made great demands on your attention,
and the two remaining subjects, rhythm and the illusion
of development, or growth, are difficult. So I can only
say, in conclusion, that the more you study artistic ARTISTIC PERCEPTION AND
composition, the more lucidly you see its likeness to the
composition of life itself, from the elementary biological
"NATURAL LIGHT"
patterns to the great structures of human feeling and
personality that are the import of our crowning works
of art; and it is by virtue of this likeness that a picture,
a song, a poem is more than a thing—that it seems to be
a living form, created, not mechanically contrived, for
the expression of a meaning that seems inherent in the
work itself: our own sentient being, Reality.
BY artistic perception I mean the perception of expres-
siveness in works of art. Expressiveness belongs to every
successful work; it is not limited to pictures, poems, or
other compositions that make a reference to human
beings and their feelings, show looks and gestures or
emotionally charged situations. The representation of
feeling is one thing, the specifically artistic expression of
it is another. A wholly non-representational design, a
happily proportioned building, a beautiful pot may,
artistically speaking, be just as expressive as a love-sonnet
or a religious picture. It has an import which is, I think,
a wordlessly presented conception of what life feels like.
That is the significance of "Significant Form" (to use
G i v e Bell's much-attacked phrase), the "livingness"
Augusto Centeno calls the essence of art, the cryptic
"artistic truth" that is independent of facts and actuali-
ties. I call it vital import: "vital," because it is always
S9
5*
PROBLEMS OF ART
ARTISTIC PERCEPTION AND " N A T U R A L LIGHT"
some mode of feeling, sense, emotion, consciousness,

If you grant that artistic perception is an act of
that is conveyed by a successful work of art; "import," intuition, you do throw the doors wide open to this
because it is conveyed. Vital import is the element of sort of mysticism, mixed with every degree of philosophi-
felt life objectified in the work, made amenable to our cal irrationalism and transcendentalism on the one hand,
understanding. In this way, and in no other essential and on the other with sheer sentimentality and romantic
way, a work of art is a symbol. fancies. But the fact that an important concept has been
But vital import, or artistic expressiveness, cannot be used in confused or questionable ways does not prevent
pointed out, as the presence of this or that color con- anyone from using it properly. It merely saddles the
trast, balance of shapes, or thematic item may be pointed careful user with the rather heavy task of clearing away
out by the discerning critic. You apprehend expressive- the adventitious meanings that cling to it, and their
ness or you do not; it cannot be demonstrated. One may equally irrelevant implications. "Intuition" is such an
demonstrate that such-and-such ingredients—chords, overloaded concept; and since I do believe, with many
words, shapes, or what-not—have gone into the structure aestheticians and most artists, that artistic perception is
of the work; one may even point out pleasant or harsh intuitive, a matter of direct insight and not a product of
sensory effects, and anybody may note them. But no one discursive thinking, it behoves me, I suppose, to explain
can show, let alone prove to us, that a certain vision of what I mean by "intuition," and especially what I do not
human feeling (in the widest sense of the word "feel- mean. For I do not believe that artistic perception is a
ing") is embodied in the piece. This sort of feeling, kind of reasoning performed, as people say, "through
which is not represented, but composed and articulated feeling," as though one could use feeling in place of
by the entire apparition, the art symbol, is found there thought to vindicate a belief. It does not involve belief,
directly, or not at all. That finding of a vital import is nor lead to the acceptance of any proposition at all. But
what I mean by "artistic perception." It is not the same neither is it irrational, a special talent for making a
thing as aesthetic sensibility; it is insight. mystical, unnegotiated contact with reality. I submit
Artists and art-lovers generally agree that artistic that it is an act of understanding, mediated by a single
perception is intuitive. It takes place, they would say, symbol, which is the created visual, poetic, musical, or
spontaneously and immediately, without reasoning, other aesthetic impression—the apparition that results
without benefit of logic. Some would claim, further- from the artist's work.
more, that a special power of intuition leads the art con- What, then, is meant b y calling artistic perception
noisseur to knowledge of an inner reality, which the "intuitive"? What is meant b y "intuition"?
philistine can never know. This knowledge, they say, There are, in the main, two common uses of the word
comes through feeling, not thought; it is irrational; it is a in serious philosophical literature, besides its technical
metaphysical contact with the real. use as a translation of Kant's word Anschauung, which
60 61
PROBLEMS OF ART ARTISTIC PERCEPTION A N D " N A T U R A L LIGHT"
we may omit here (some other words of his, sometimes "Intuition" in this sense is a mysterious event, a star-
translated as "intuition," fall under one of the two uses tling experience when, or rather if, it occurs. Its pos-
just mentioned). T h e first of these uses makes "intuition" session is regarded as a special gift, said to be found most
mean some sort of extra-sensory as well as unreasoned frequently in persons of slight or untrained discursive
awareness of fact—a knowledge that occurs without any intellect. It is, moreover, intuition in this sense that is
mediating information, exhibition, or other experience opposed to everything that may be called reason—
to induce it. Katherine Wild, the author of a study observation, memory, proof, probable inference. And it
entitled Intuition, follows this first usage; she offers two
1
is in this sense that people argue about its existence, and
alternative definitions, which in fact alternate cheerfully adduce wonderful instances to prove it or invent ad hoc
and indiscriminately all through her book: explanations to disprove it.
" A . A n intuition is an immediate awareness by a sub- There is, however, another sense of the word, that
ject, of some particular entity, without such aid from the does not make intuition a dubious abnormal phenome-
senses or from reason as would account for that aware- non, nor commit us to any denial of sensory aids or
ness. symbolic media in connection with it. This sense has
B. Intuition is a method by which a subject becomes been defined quite broadly and at the same time precisely
aware of an entity without such aid from the senses or by C. A . Ewing in his lecture to the British Academy,
from reason as would account for such awareness." 1 9 4 1 , entitled "Reason and Intuition," as "cognitions
2
Here the author adds a gloss: "In both cases, 'entity' that are both non-empirical and immediate." Intuition
is used in its widest possible significance so as to include: in this sense is a normal and in fact ubiquitous phenome-
idea, fact, situation, indeed any one individual particular non in our mental life. In his later development of the
of any nature whatever. . . ." subject I think Mr. Ewing tends to confuse "intuition"
Whether such extra-sensory and otherwise uncaused with "belief," which is not the same thing (we shall
knowledge of any "entity" ever occurs seems to me return to the distinction a little later). This confusion
highly problematical. As for the second definition, which leads him to speak of religious and moral intuitions, and
makes "intuition" a method of extra-sensory and un- of erroneous claims to intuitive knowledge. I don't think
accountable knowing, I am quite sure no such method there are any peculiarly religious, moral, or other topi-
exists. Let us take the better definition to establish this cally specialized intuitions, though intuition occurs in
concept of intuition: it is, then, some super-sensible and thinking on these special topics. But that problem need
irrational awareness of what she calls "individual par- not detain us. In the early part of his lecture he explains
ticulars"—things, facts, or what not, but always con-
* Published in the Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XXVH,
crete entities.
and reprinted as a monograph by Humphrey Milford, London, 1941.
1
London: Cambridge University Press, 1938. See p. 12.
62 63
PROBLEMS OF ART ARTISTIC PERCEPTION AND " N A T U R A L LIGHT"
how "cognitions that are both non-empirical and im concepts lies a whole gamut of more or less logical,
mediate" occur in reasoning itself, and in so doing he is more or less mystical notions (including Croce's, which
using precisely the concept here in question. Here are makes intuition identical with expression).
his words: Insight into the nature of relations whereby we
"In order to establish conclusions of any sort by recognize distinctions and identities, contradictions and
reasoning we need premises which are supplied either entailments, and use, even if we never explicitly assert,
by experience or by immediate insight as opposed to the laws of logic, is what John Locke, in his Essay on
reasoning. . . . There is a further point of still greater Human Understanding, called "natural light." "For," he
importance. In order to conduct a valid deductive argu says, "in this the mind is at no pains of proving or
ment we must see that each step in the argument follows examining, but perceives the truth, as the eye doth
logically from the preceding one. . . . W e could not light, only by being directed toward it. Thus the mind
start at all in any reasoning without assuming that we perceives, that white is not black, that a circle is not a
immediately perceive a connexion between certain pre triangle, that three are more than two, and equal to one
misses and their conclusion. T o argue at all we must and two. Such kind of truths the mind perceives at the
see the connexion between the propositions which con first sight of the ideas together, by bare intuition, with
stitute the different stages of the argument not by out the intervention of any other idea." Locke held,
mediate reasoning but intuitively. W e can no doubt call furthermore, that we have intuitive knowledge of our
this not 'intuition' but 'immediate,' as opposed to own existence; but I am fairly sure that this special
mediate, reasoning . . . but such immediate reasoning intuition, which seems, offhand, to go beyond "natural
would only be another name for what is commonly light," resolves itself upon analysis into a complex of
called intuition. The connexion between ρ and q would other intuitions. Let us lay it aside for the moment,
still be something that you could not prove but either especially as it belongs to the most questionable part
saw or did not see."
of Locke's doctrine, his psychology.
This sense of the word "intuition" is certainly quite
If, then, we gather together all the functions of
different from the one which Katherine Wild defined.
intuition enumerated at various points in the Essay, we
If hers is taken as the extreme metaphysical sense, namely
find that intuitive knowledge is essentially:
direct awareness of concrete reality, Mr. Ewing's use
in the passage just quoted—"cognitions that are both A. Perception of relations in general.
non-empirical and immediate"—may be regarded as the B. Perception of forms, or abstractive seeing.
other extreme, the barest, most naturalistic, and least C. Perception of significance, or meaning.
hypothetical sense. Between these two widely different D. Perception of examples.
(5
64
Each one of these intuitive functions is, of course, a epistemological topic which we need not pursue here.*
meet subject for a long study; but even without further Let us return to the realm of art, and to the recogni
inquiry we may observe a common characteristic of all tion of expressiveness in works of art, and the perception
forms of insight that compose the spectrum of Locke's of artistic import.
"natural light": they are all either logical or semantical. Such perception is, I think, intuitive. The import of
Intuition, for Locke, is not a revelation of metaphysical a work of art—its essential, or artistic, import—can
reality; such reality, which is called "substance" or "real never be stated in discursive language. A work of art is
essence," neither reason nor intuition finally reveals. If an expressive form, and therefore a symbol, but not a
we have any inkling of it at all, we have it by inference symbol which points beyond itself so that one's thought
from the data of "sensation and reflection." passes on to the concept symbolized. The idea remains
Locke took the same view of discursive reason that bound up in the form that makes it conceivable. That
Mr. Ewing presented in the passage I have quoted. is why I do not call the conveyed, or rather presented,
Reason is a systematic means of getting from one in idea the meaning of the sensuous form, but use the
tuition to another, of eliciting complex and cumulative philosophically less committal word "import" to denote
intuitions. There is, then, no possible conflict between what that sensuous form, the work of art, expresses.
intuition as he conceives it, and discursive reason. There The act of intuition whereby we recognize the idea of
is a distinction between insight achieved by reasoning and "felt life" embodied in a good work of art is the same
insight immediately enjoyed, but that is no opposition sort of insight that makes language more than a stream
between two radically different powers of the mind. of little squeaks or an arabesque of serried inkspots. The
What I mean by intuition is essentially what Locke great differences between artistic import and meaning
called "natural light" (with, possibly, some reservation in a strict sense, lie in the disparity of the symbolic
about intuitive self-knowledge). Intuition is, I think, the modes to which, respectively, they belong. Language is
fundamental intellectual activity, which produces logical a symbolism: that is, a system of symbols governed by
or semantical understanding. It comprises all acts of in conventions of use, separately or in combination. It has
sight or recognition of formal properties, of relations, the further characteristic that different complexes of its
of significance, and of abstraction and exemplification. basic symbols are equivalent to each other; that is, dif
It is more primitive than belief, which is true or false. ferent combinations and permutations of words (the
Intuition is not true or false, but simply present. W e basic symbols) may be used to express the same mean-
may construct true or false propositions involving its * Any reader who wishes to pursue the subject further is referred to
deliverances, just as direct sensory experiences may be the essay, "Abstraction in Science and Abstraction in Art," in the
Appendix.
involved in true or fake propositions. But that is a large
66 6η
ARTISTIC PERCEPTION AND NATURAL LIGHT
PROBLEMS OF ART
of time). But in art we do not generalize. A work of
ing. This makes definition and explanation possible
art is a single, specific presentation of its import. If that
within the frame of language itself. It also allows us to
import is to be perceived the abstraction of it must be
pass from one expression to another and build up an idea
made directly by the way it is presented. That is why,
out of simpler ideas gradually meted out. This process is
in one way, all good art is abstract, and in another way
known as discourse. Discursive thought is a passage
it is concrete. The "Idea," as Flaubert called it, is not
from one intuition, or act of understanding, to another.
only perceived by one initial intuition, but also without
If, at any point, intuition fails, we use equivalent symbols
being separated from its symbol; it is universalium in re.
to present the desired meaning until insight occurs.
The point I want to stress is that the same sort of
A work of art, though it may be called a symbol
intuition that enters into ordinary understanding, and
(perhaps for want of a more accurate w o r d ) , is not a
forms the basis of discursive reason, functions as artistic
product of a symbolism, or conventional system of sym-
perception when we are confronted with a work of art
bols. There are, of course, conventions in art, but these
that has import for us. The great difference between
are not simply accepted conventions of symbol-using.
rational insight and artistic insight lies in the ways
What they are cannot well be brought into this discus-
intuition is elicited. W e need not postulate any mysteri-
sion, as it would take us too far afield. The relevant facts
ous factor in the mind or in the world to admit that
are ( i ) that a picture, a statue, a building, a poem or
artistic perception is directly intuitive, incommunicable,
novel or play, or a musical composition, is a single
yet rational: it is one of the major forms of "natural
symbol of complex vital and emotive import; ( 2 ) that
light."
there are no conventional meaningful units which com-
T h e recognition of art as both a product and an
pose that symbol, and build up its import stepwise for
instrument of human insight opens a new approach to a
the percipient; (3) that artistic perception, therefore,
problem that many philosophical and psychological
always starts with an intuition of total import, and
theories (e.g., the pleasure theory, the play theory, the
increases by contemplation as the expressive articula-
"wish-fulfilment" theory) notoriously fail to meet: the
tions of the form become apparent; ( 4 ) that the import
problem of its cultural importance. W h y is it so apt to
of an art symbol cannot be paraphrased in discourse.
be the vanguard of cultural advance, as it was in Egypt,
All symbolic expression involves a formulation of
in Greece, in Christian Europe (think of Gregorian
what is expressed; that means recognition of form, the
music and Gothic architecture), in Renaissance Italy—
elementary act of abstraction, which is one of the
not to speculate about ancient cavemen, whose art is all
major functions of intuition. In discourse we achieve
that we know of them? One thinks of culture as eco-
abstraction, or awareness of form, through generaliza-
nomic increase, social organization, the gradual ascend-
tion (this again is a subject w e have to eschew for lack
68 69
ancy of rational thinking and scientific control of nature by language. W e think, as we speak, in terms of objects
over superstitious imagination and magical practices. and their relations.
But art is not practical; it is neither philosophy nor But the process of breaking up our sense experience
science; it is not religion, morality, nor even social com- in this way, making reality conceivable, memorable,
ment (as many drama critics take comedy to be). What sometimes even predictable, is a process of imagination.
does it contribute to culture that could be of major Primitive conception is imagination. Language and imagi-
importance? nation grow up together in a reciprocal tutelage.
It merely presents forms—sometimes intangible forms What discursive symbolism—language in its literal use
—to imagination. Its direct appeal is to imagination—that —does for our awareness of things about us and our own
faculty, or function, that Lord Bacon considered the chief relation to them, the arts do for our awareness of subjec-
tive reality, feeling and emotion; they give inward experi-
stumbling block in the way of reason, and that enlight-
ences form and thus make them conceivable. The only
ened writers like Stuart Chase never tire of condemning
way we can really envisage vital movement, the stirring
as the source of all nonsense and bizarre erroneous beliefs.
and growth and passage of emotion, and ultimately the
And so it is; but it is also the source of all insight and true
whole direct sense of human life, is in artistic terms. A
beliefs. Imagination is probably the oldest mental trait
musical person thinks of emotions musically. They can-
that is typically human—older than discursive reason; it
not be discursively talked about above a very general
is probably the common source of dream, reason, religion,
level. But they may none the less be known—objectively
and all true general observation. It is this primitive human
set forth, publicly known—and there is nothing neces-
power—imagination—that engenders the arts and is in
sarily confused or formless about emotions.
turn directly affected by their products.
As soon as the natural forms of subjective experience
Somewhere at the animalian starting line of human are abstracted to the point of symbolic presentation, we
evolution lie the beginnings of that supreme instrument can use those forms to imagine feeling and understand
of the mind, language. W e think of it as a device for its nature. Self-knowledge, insight into all phases of life
communication among the members of a society. But and mind, springs from artistic imagination. That is the
communication is only one, and perhaps not even the cognitive value of the arts.
first, of its functions. The first thing it does is to break up But their influence on human life goes deeper than the
what William James called the "blooming, buzzing con- intellectual level. As language actually gives form to our
fusion" of sense perception into units and groups, events sense-experience, grouping our impressions around those
and chains of events—things and relations, causes and things which have names, and fitting sensations to the
effects. All these patterns are imposed on our experience qualities that have adjectival names, and so on, the arts
70 7'
PROBLEMS OF ART ARTISTIC PERCEPTION AND NATURAL LIGHT
we live with—our picture books and stories and the music vision, and lends expressiveness and emotional import to
we hear—actually form our emotive experience. Every the world. Wherever art takes a motif from actuality—a
generation has its styles of feeling. One age shudders and "flowering branch, a bit of landscape, a historic event or a
blushes and faints, another swaggers, still another is god personal memory, any model or theme from life—it
like in a universal indifference. These styles in actual transforms it into a piece of imagination, and imbues its
emotion are not insincere. They are largely unconscious image with artistic vitality. The result is an impregnation
—determined by many social causes, but shaped by of ordinary reality with the significance of created form.
artists, usually popular artists of the screen, the juke-box, This is the subjectification of nature, that makes reality
the shop window, and the picture magazine. (That, rather itself a symbol of life and feeling.
than incitement to crime, is my objection to the comics.) I cannot say much about this last point because I am
Irwin Edman remarks in one of his books that our emo just working with the idea myself. One of my students
tions are largely Shakespeare's poetry. gave it to me, in a criticism of my own theory. But it
This influence of art on life gives us an indication why seems to me to be of great significance.
a period of efflorescence in the arts is apt to lead a cultural Let us sum up briefly, then, why the arts, which many
advance: it formulates a new way of feeling, and that is people regard as a cultural frill, are actually never a late
the beginning of a cultural age. It suggests another addition to civilized life, an ornament gracing society like
matter for reflection, too: that a wide neglect of artistic tea ceremonies or etiquette, but are born during the rise
education is a neglect in the education of feeling. Most and the primitive phases of cultures, and often outrun all
people are so imbued with the idea that feeling is a form other developments in achieving mature character and
less total organic excitement in human beings as in ani technical competence. Cultures begin with the develop
mals, that the idea of educating feeling, developing its ment of personal and social and religious feeling. The
scope and quality, seems odd to them, if not absurd. It is great instrument of this development is art. For, ( ι ) art
really, I think, at the very heart of personal education. makes feeling apparent, objectively given so we may
There is one other function of the arts that benefits reflect on it and understand it; ( 2 ) the practice and
not so much the advance of culture as its stabilization; an familiar knowledge of any art provides forms for actual
influence on individual lives. This function is the con feeling to take, as language provides forms for sensory
verse and complement of the objectification of feeling, experience and factual observation; and (3) art is the
the driving force of creation in art: it is the education of education of the senses to see nature in expressive form.
vision that we receive in seeing, hearing, reading works of Thereby the actual world becomes in some measure sym
art—the development of the artist's eye, that assimilates bolic of feeling (without being "anthropomorphized,"
ordinary sights (or sounds, motions, or events) to inward supposed to have feelings) and personally significant.
72 73
PROBLEMS OF ART
The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify

outward experience of nature. Art education is the educa-
tion of feeling, and a society that neglects it gives itself
up to formless emotion. Bad art is corruption of feeling.
This is a large factor in the irrationalism which dictators
and demagogues exploit. DECEPTIVE ANALOGIES:
SPECIOUS AND REAL RELATION-
SHIPS AMONG THE ARTS
T H E interrelations among all the arts—painting, sculpture,

and architecture, music, poetry, drama, fiction, dance,
film, and any others you may admit—have become a
venerable old topic in aesthetics. The prevailing doctrines
about those relations, too, are rapidly getting gray hair
or something that looks a lot like a mould. It has lately be-
come acceptable again to assert that all the arts are really
just one " A r t " with a capital A; that the apparent differ-
ence between painting and poetry, for instance, are super-
ficial, due only to the difference of their materials. One
artist paints with pigments, the other with words—or one
speaks in rhyme, and one in images—and so forth. Dance
is the language of gesture, drama is "really" a dithyramb,
i.e., a choric dance, architecture is (of course) frozen
music. Some aestheticians merely mark the fundamental
7* 7/
PROBLEMS OF ART
DECEPTIVE ANALOGIES
unity of all the arts, and then proceed to classify the vari-
nor did Homer slip from epic composition into composing
ous manifestations of art as lower and higher forms, major
vases or figurines of clay. Poetry and the plastic arts have
and minor arts. Thomas Munro lists a hundred kinds—
always been separate, even when poetry furnished the
alphabetically. Their peculiar differences, usually con-
themes of painting and statuary, or poets mentioned the
ceived as different limitations, are supposed to spring from
pictorial decorations on a hero's shield.
the materials with which they work. Other philosophers
Yet the fact that all artistic activities are related to each
and critics connect them in parallel rather than in an
other has always been just as apparent as their distinct
ascending order. These writers see a commonwealth of
characters. It is these relations which, for all that has been
art, instead of a hierarchy of the arts. But all are agreed
written about them, have so far been treated only in a
that the several arts are just so many aspects of one and
superficial fashion. Sometimes we hear of the interrela-
the same human adventure, and almost every recent book
tion of all the arts. Before long this one universal interrela-
in aesthetics begins with the statement that the customary
tion is described either as an original identity or as an
distinctions among the arts are an unfortunate result of
ideal ultimate union; and there the study of it ends, per-
our modern tendency to departmentalize the contents of
haps with a few examples of conjoined arts—poetry and
our lives. 1
music united in song, plastic art and music in dance, po-

It is true that questions of the exact compass of this or
etry and painting in a play with scenery, or all the arts
that art—poetry, music, drama, dance—are taken more
in the operatic Gesamtkunstiverk. It ends much as it
seriously in the modern age than they were in times past.
began, with quotations from many authorities denounc-
Scholars like Paul Cristeller have established that fact, I
ing the customary separation, but heightened by the posi-
think, beyond doubt. Yet we have utterances by Leo-
tive advice that art schools should teach a course in music
nardo da Vinci and Michelangelo on the relative merits
and music schools should take cognizance of the sister
of painting, poetry, and sculpture, and comparisons of
arts, painting, poetry, and drama.
painting with music; and such comparisons go back to
Horace, Simonides, and Aristotle. There seems to be an inveterate tendency of our minds,
perhaps abetted by idioms of our language, to treat any
Whether the distinction of the arts be old or new in
two things that bear some intimate relation to each other
aesthetic theory, in practice it is ancient. Praxiteles was a
as identical. The identity of two terms, once established,
sculptor and Sophocles a poet; the statues of Praxiteles
is an important but not at all interesting relation. It means
are no more likely to be confused with Sophoclean
that one and the same thing goes by two names, and that
tragedies than Brancusi's statues with plays by Pirandello,
is all. If poetry, music, painting, etc., are all just different
1
See, 'or example, Curt Sachs: The Commonwealth of Art. names for the same thing, their relation to each other is
76
77
PROBLEMS OF ART DECEPTIVE ANALOGIES
exhausted by the dictionary. But why should Art have ences, rather than vehemently denying their importance,
so many names? one finds that they go deeper than one would expect.
The answer to that question is usually that artists work Each genus, for instance, creates a different kind of ex-
with a great many materials, and as their techniques have perience altogether; each may be said to make its own
to differ accordingly, they seem to be doing quite differ- peculiar primary creation. The plastic arts create a purely
ent things. All the arts are in essence one, but they differ visual space, music a purely audible time, dance a realm of
in various accidents. From there on, we find ourselves on interacting powers, etc. Each art has its own principles of
the trail of the accidents, and all interesting facts that constructing its final creations, or works. Each has its
emerge only lead further and further away from the normal materials, such as tones for music, pigments for
basic unity of Art to its diversities. painting; but no art is limited to its normal materials by
The trouble with this approach to the interrelations of anything but their sufficiency for its normal creative pur-
the arts is that it takes for granted the facts that are to be poses. Even when music uses spoken words or architec-
understood; but what a study takes for granted lies be- ture enlists the paintbrush, music or architecture does not
hind it, and hence cannot be the object of investigation therefore wander from its own realm, the realm of its
that lies before it. What we begin with is not what we primary creation, whether the artist employs usual or un-
arrive at—discover, clarify, or demonstrate. If we start by usual materials, in ordinary or extraordinary ways.
postulating the essential sameness of the arts we shall learn But if you trace the differences among the arts as far
no more about that sameness. W e shall only skip or evade and as minutely as possible, there comes a point beyond
every problem that seems, offhand, to pertain to one art which no more distinctions can be made. It is the point
but not to some other, because it cannot be really a prob- where the deeper structual devices—ambivalent images,
lem of Art, and so we shall forcibly limit ourselves to intersecting forces, great rhythms and their analogues in
simple generalities that may be safely asserted (as is cus-
detail, variations, congruences, in short: all the organiz-
tomary) of: "a poem, a sonata, a Raphael Madonna, a
ing devices—reveal the principles of dynamic form that
beautiful dance . . . " and so on.
we learn from nature as spontaneously as we learn lan-
M y approach to the problem of interrelations among guage from our elders. These principles appear, in one art
the arts has been the precise opposite: taking each art as after another, as the guiding ones in every work that
autonomous, and asking about each in turn what it cre- achieves organic unity, vitality of form or expressiveness,
ates, what are the principles of creation in this art, what which is what we mean by the significance of art.
its scope and possible materials. Such a treatment shows Where no more distinctions can be found among the
up the differences among the several great genera of art— several arts, there lies their unity. W e need not accept
plastic, musical, balletic, poetic. Pursuing these differ- this unity by faith and reject as vicious all inquiries that
18 19
call it in question; its demonstration is the result of such I called this special dimension the "primary illusion," but
inquiries. Here we have certainly the deepest relationship "illusion" is a prejudicial word, and as we have no time
among the arts: they all exemplify the general principles to explain and justify its use here, we had better shelve it
of Art. I am using the word " A r t " in the restricted sense altogether. Let us call it the primary apparition of an
sometimes delimited as "the fine arts" or "liberal arts"— a r t . . . (A brief exposition of this concept is here deleted,
plastic, musical, literary, theatrical, etc.—and not in the because it is already given in the lecture on artistic crea-
widest sense, in which we speak of "the arts of war and tion.)
peace." Both uses are current; but I am talking about the Each one of the arts has its primary apparition, which
kind of Art whost products are judged as artistic or in- is something created, not something found in the world
artistic. W e do not say that a bungled surgical operation and used. The materials of art—pigments, sounds, words,
is inartistic (though we may find it unaesthetic). Using tones, etc.—are found and used to create forms in some
" A r t " in its restricted sense, then, I venture the defini- virtual dimension. I call this primary apparition "primary"
tion: All art is the creation of perceptible forms expressive not because it is made first, before the work (it is not),
of human feeling. but because it is made always, from the first stroke of
This definition contains several weasel words: "cre- work in any art. Everything a painter does creates and
ation," "forms," "expressive," and even "feeling." But organizes—or in sad event, disorganizes—pictorial space.
weasels do have holes where they may be cornered. I Where no pictorial space is created we see spots of color
don't think my weasels are sliding around quite freely on a flat object, as we see them on a palette, or as we see
any more; but if I were to catch them for your inspection spilled paint on the floor. But even a very bad picture is
just now we would need more than this one hour to get a spatial apparition.
on with our subject, the relations that hold among all the Music, on the other hand, though it may create ex-
arts or among some of them. periences of space, is in a completely given dimension of
Essentially, then, all the arts create forms to express virtual time. Virtual time is its primary apparition, its
the life of feeling (the life of feeling, not the feelings an dimension, in which its created forms move. I cannot go
artist happens to have); and they all do it by the same into further explanations here, but only indicate the find-
basic principles. But there the simple sameness ends. ings of an enquiry that began by treating each art in its
When we look at what the various arts create, we come own terms, and became general by stepwise generaliza-
to the source of their differentiation, from which each tion.
art derives its autonomy and its problems. Let it suffice, then, that each of the great orders of art
Each art begets a special dimension of experience that has its own primary apparition which is the essential fea-
is a special kind of image of reality. In Feeling and Form ture of all its works. This thesis has two consequences for
80 81
our present discussions: it means that the distinctions question: "What, in this case, is created? Only appari-
commonly made between the great orders—the distinctions are created; what sort of apparition is this?"
tion between painting and music, or poetry and music, or The arts are defined by their primary apparitions, not
sculpture and dance—are not false, artificial divisions due by materials and techniques. Painted sculpture is not a
to a modern passion for pigeonholes, but are founded on joint product of sculpture and painting at all, for what is
empirical and important facts; secondly, it means that created is a sculpture, not a picture. Paint is used, but used
there can be no hybrid works, belonging as much to one for creating sculptural form—not for painting. The fact
art as to another. And we might add that the evolution- that poetry involves sound, the normal material of music,
ist's idea of one undifferentiated Art preceding, in primi- is not what makes it comparable to music—where it is
tive times, the several kinds of art, loses much of its off- comparable.
hand plausibility. In fact, direct comparison is an over-rated method for
A t this point most people will be ready to ask: "But is discovering relations among the arts. Long before you
there, then, no relation whatever among the arts, except can generalize by comparison of the actual processes in-
volved in plastic, musical, poetic, and all other kinds of
their unity of purpose? Are they historically entirely un-
creation, and thus relate all the arts as species of one genus,
related? And do you mean to say poetry and music are
(i.e. A r t ) , the study of just two primary apparitions is
never used together in song, nor sculpture and architec-
enough to bring some interesting relations to light; for
ture in a monument? H o w silly!"
instance, what is the primary apparition in plastic art—
M y answer is that to say two things are distinct is not
virtual space—may appear as a secondary apparition in
to say they are unrelated. The fact that they are distinct
music, whose essential stuff is virtual time. There are
is what enables them to have all sorts of highly special-
spatial effects in music; and careful study—not fancy—
ized, interesting relations to each other—much more in-
shows that these are always effects of virtual, not actual,
teresting than the relation of pseudo-identity that we
space, with the characteristics which painters and sculp-
allege when we hold them to be, really, several views of tors call "plastic." Similarly, where time-effects are
the same thing, so they might melt into each other on achieved in the plastic arts, they always have the qualities
better inspection. It is precisely by reason of their distinct of virtual time, the "stuff" of music. Progressively we
primary apparitions that such complex works as song, find then that the primary apparition of any art may
opera, drama, or choric dance are not just the normal appear as secondary in another, and that in the arts gener-
functions of several arts conjoined in varying proportion. ally all space is plastic space, all time is musical time, all
In such works there are interesting, often involved rela- impersonal forces are balletic (the word "balletic" here
tionships that one would not suspect without the guiding refers to Dance, not specifically ballet. There is no
82
S3
DECEPTIVE ANALOGIES
PROBLEMS OF ART
and assimilated to the dance; and for this many a third-

English adjective equivalent to the German tanzerisch),.
rate musical piece has served as well as a significant work.
all events poetic. Everything in the arts is created, never
Every work has its being in only one order of art; com-
imported from actuality; and in this way their funda-
positions of different orders are not simply conjoined, but
mental creations meet. This is one of their exchanges.
all except one will cease to appear as what they are. A
Another, more striking (though perhaps not more
song sung on the stage in a good play is a piece of dramatic
important) relation between two arts obtains where a
action. If we receive it in the theatre as we would receive
work of one art serves in the making of another work
it in concert, the play is a pastiche, like the average revue
belonging to another art: the case in which two arts are
that is not a creation at all, but a series of little creations,
usually said to be conjoined. Consider, for instance, a good
variously good or bad themselves.
poem successfully set to music. The result is a good song.
One would naturally expect the excellence of the song This far-reaching principle of cross-relationships
to depend as much on the quality of the poem as on the among the arts is the principle of assimilation. It sounds
musical handling. But this is not the case. Schubert has very radical, but I have always found it to hold. Opera
made beautiful songs out of great lyrics by Heine, Shake- is music; to be good opera it must be dramatic, but that
speare, and Goethe, and equally beautiful songs out of is not to be drama. Drama, on the other hand, swallows
the commonplace, sometimes maudlin lyrics of Miiller. all plastic creations that enter into its theatrical precinct,
The poetic creation counts only indirectly in a song, in and their own pictorial, architectural, or sculptural beau-
exciting the composer to compose it. After that, the poem ties do not add themselves to its own beauty. A great
as a work of art is broken up. Its words, sound and sense work of sculpture, say the original Venus of Milo that
alike, its phrases, its images, all become musical material. stands in the Louvre, transported to the comic or tragic
In a well-wrought song the text is swallowed, hide and stage (perhaps in a play about a sculptor) would count
hair. That does not mean that the words do not count, only as stage setting, an element in the action, and might
that other words would have done as well; but the words not meet this purpose as well as a pasteboard counterfeit
have been musically exploited, they have entered into a of it would do.
new composition, and the poem as a poem has disappeared The principle of assimilation holds usually in certain
in the song. familiar ways. Music ordinarily swallows words and ac-
The same thing holds for music and dance. A dance is tions creating opera, oratorio or song; dance commonly
not necessarily the better for using very good music. assimilates music. But this is not a fast rule. Sometimes a
Dance normally swallows music, as music normally swal- poem may swallow music, or even dance; dramatic
lows words. The music that, perhaps, first inspires a poetry quite normally does both. I have never known
dance, is none the less cancelled out as art in its own right, music to incorporate dancing, but it might. The only safe
84
assertion is that every work has its primary apparition, to frozen music; but music is not melted architecture. When
which all other virtual dimensions are secondary. There this musical ice cream is returned to its liquid state, it
are no happy marriages in art—only successful rape. runs away in an amorphous flow of sound. The same
Half-baked theories, such as I consider the traditional weakness appears in painting that purports to render mu-
theories of the unity of Art to be, are apt to have sorry sical composition. I am thinking of the musical colors
consequences when practice is based on them. Among in Fantasia, and the music-paintings of students in the
such sorry consequences are the works that result from Boston Museum School of Art. A painting expressive of
serious efforts to paint the counterparts of symphonies a very lyrical composition, such as Chopin's G major
or parallel poems or pictures by musical compositions. Nocturne, has no lyrical character at all, but only indis-
Color symphonies are painted in the belief that the de- tinct washes of color. The reason for such failure is that
ployment of colors on a canvas corresponds to the the painter is not guided by discernment of musical val-
deployment of tones in music, so that an analogy of struc- ues, but is concentrating his attention on his own feelings
ture should produce analogous works. This is, of course, under the influence of sounds, and producing symptoms
a corollary of the proposition that the various arts are of these feelings. What he registers is a sequence of essen-
distinguished by the differences in their respective ma- tially uncomposed, actual experiences; symptoms are not
terials, to which their techniques have to be adapted, but works.
were it not for these material differences their procedures There is, however, a notable exception to these failures
would be the same. Oddly enough, the results of such of artistic translation. Sometimes a poet calls certain of
translation, when it is really technically guided, have no his poems "quartets," or a composer entitles a com-
vestige of the artistic values of their originals. Even position "Arabesque," and the designation seems fitting,
where the parallels of structure are recognizable, as in a even enlightemng, although it suggests no particular
painted design following the verbal design of a sonnet, model nor invites any method of comparison. That is
the visual forms may be interesting, even pleasant, but because the artist—say T . S. Eliot, in the Four Quartets
they are not creative, beyond their mere creation of —creates an effect, an expressive virtual entity purely
virtual space (which they do create); as expressive forms poetic, that functions in some particular way character-
they do not resemble the sonnet at all. istic of string quartets: combining great richness of feel-
There is another class of translations that purports to ing with extreme economy of material. The result is a
express in one medium the emotional values of some work semblance of concentration together with complete
in a different medium; and this sort of suggestion (it is articulation. In the poems it is all done by means of the
really nothing more) tends to produce works that are proportion of material to technique, and of scope of
very weak in form. Simonides said that architecture is feeling to scope its image. The poems are very brief. In
86 *7
quartet music it results from the complete exploitation Such occasional parallels would be trivial, were they
of just four voices. A normal quartet is not very brief, not further related to one of the most exciting phe-
but generally has four movements. nomena in the realm of the arts, which may be termed
Similarly, Schumann's "Arabesque" does not copy any "ultimate abstraction," or "transcendence."
design of Arabic sculpture, but it achieves a feeling of But this is a difficult topic, inviting philosophical
elaborated thought where no thought really has begin- speculations that had better not come into a brief single
ning or end, or of motion in a maze yet without dizzi- lecture, especially at its weary end: I mentioned it only
ness. This effect, which is characteristic of Arabesque because it is the most interesting and perhaps the closest
sculpture and architecture, is rare and striking in music. relation among the arts—the point where their imaginal
The important point in these parallels is, that they distinctions seem really to yield, for a moment, to their
do not co-ordinate materials, for instance tones with community of import, and achieve the utmost abstrac-
words, or phrases with sculptured forms. Interweaving tion of that import for the beholder's direct intuition. It
of phrases is only an obvious bit of imitation in Schu- is here that all art "aspires towards the condition of
mann's piece; the to and fro of ambiguous or mixed music," and music becomes a timeless vision of feeling.
harmonies and the relations of melodic to rhythmic
accents are just as important, and correspond to nothing
in a stone tracery. The sculptor works with light, tex-
ture, height, and many other material data of which
Schumann was certainly not thinking. He probably was
not even thinking of any particular arabesque, though
of course we cannot know his thought.
A s such successful analogues do not rest on corres-
pondence of material factors, so also they are not com-
parably constructed. The similarity that justifies the
borrowed title word holds between their respective
formulations of feeling, and these are achieved in entirely
different ways in different arts. There is no rule that can
govern two arts, and probably no technical device that
can be taken over from one to another, let alone mate-
rials that correspond. But there are comparable created
forms.
88
8„
IMITATION AND TRANSFORMATION IN THE ARTS
a desired object, an artefact. But, whereas most artefacts

are made for an instrumental purpose, what we call a
7 work of art is made for the ultimate purpose of achieving
certain qualitative effects, which have expressive value.
What does art seek to express? (Here again, I can only
IMITATION AND TRANSFORMA- state my own notions dogmatically): I think every work
TION IN THE ARTS of art expresses, more or less purely, more or less subtly,
not feelings and emotions which the artist has, but feel-
ings and emotions which the artist knows; his insight
into the nature of sentience, his picture of vital experi-
ence, physical and emotive and fantastic.
Such knowledge is not expressible in ordinary dis-
course. The reason for this ineffability is not that the
ideas to be expressed are too high, too spiritual, or too
T H E problem I wish to bring up for discussion today is anything-else, but that the forms of feeling and the
—like most special problems—part and parcel of a more forms of discursive expression are logically incommen-
general topic; it presupposes a certain opinion about the surate, so that any exact concepts of feeling and emotion
import and essential nature of art. This opinion has cannot be projected into the logical form of literal
grown out of previous studies, so that I can only give language. Verbal statement, which is our normal and
you my conclusions in a statement that must sound dog- most reliable means of communication, is almost useless
matic, even arbitrary. 1 shall have to ask you to accept for conveying knowledge about the precise character
them tentatively as the background of my present argu- of the affective life. Crude designations like "joy," "sor-
ment; perhaps they may come in for some discussion row," "fear," tell us as little about vital experience as
later. general words like "thing," "being," or "place," tell us
What we call "art" in the liberal sense does not differ about the world of our perceptions. A n y more precise
from craft, or "art" in an older sense, in matter or reference to feeling is usually made by mentioning the
technique; but it differs radically in its aim. Like any circumstance that suggests it—"a mood of autumn
craft, a so-called "fine art" is the manipulation of crude evening," "a holiday feeling." The problem of logic here
matter—stone, wood, clay, pigment, metal, etc., or (by involved is one I cannot go into; suffice it to stay that
an extension of the concept of "matter") sounds, words, what some people call "significant form," and others
gestures, or other stuff, for the purpose of constructing "expressiveness," "plastic value" in visual art or "sec*
90 9*
PROBLEMS OF ART
life of feeling. But all understanding requires abstraction.
ondary meaning" in poetry, "creative design" or "inter
The abstractions which literal discourse makes are use
pretation" or what you will, is the power of certain
less for this particular subject-matter, they obscure and
qualitative effects to express the great forms and the rare
falsify rather than communicate our ideas of vitality
intricacies of the life of feeling.
and sentience. Yet there is no understanding without
Some of these seem to find direct expression in visual
symbolization, and no symbolization without abstraction.
and audible forms. Mr. Albert Barnes suggested that our
Anything about reality, that is to be expressed and con
mental orientation in space, which gives freedom and
veyed, must be abstracted from reality. There is no
certainty to our perceptual powers and is the uncon
sense in trying to convey reality pure and simple. Even
scious pivot of our mental life, is what lends significance
experience itself cannot do that. What we understand,
to pure geometric design. Jean D'Udine, in his little
we conceive, and conception always involves formula
book on the relation of art and gesture, remarks on the
tion, presentation, and therefore abstraction.
direct expression of vital feelings by all rhythmic forms,
Most people associate the word "abstraction" only
whether musical or kinetic or visual. These are the simple
with technical words that evoke as little imagery as pos
expressive elements of art, as names and literal assertions
sible, preferably none. But such words are always a
are the simple expressive elements of language.
repository of abstractions made long ago, which are
But as soon as human conception finds an adequate
now being used as common currency, chiefly by intel
symbol, it grows like Jack's beanstalk, and outgrows the
lectual specialists who manipulate them without feeling
highest reaches of what seemed such an adequate form
at all excited by any new understanding they convey.
of expression. The better the symbolism, the faster it
The understanding of their meanings is, in fact, not
has to grow, to keep up with the thought it serves and
new. When it was new, these words were not used for
fosters. That is clearly demonstrated by language. A
those concepts; great figures of speech were used to
child with ten words to its credit has certainly more than
express our first scientific insights. Time, when it was
ten concepts at its command, because every word lends
first conceived as a scientific notion rather than a fateful
itself at once to generalization, transfer of meanings,
Being, flowed in a one-dimensional stream from the
suggestion of related ideas, all sorts of subtle shades and
throne of God. Space was chaos and abyss, abstracted
variations created in use. The same thing holds for
from the rest of existence in mystic symbols, before
artistic expression. Just as language grows in subtlety,
this abstraction grew familiar enough to have a dead
in syntactical forms and idiom as well as in vocabulary,
common-sense name and be defined by all the proposi
so the power of articulation through sensuous form
tions of descriptive geometry.
grows with the needs of the conceiving mind.
How, and by whom, are abstractions originally made?
T h e aim of art is insight, understanding of the essential
η
92
PROBLEMS OF ART IMITATION AND TRANSFORMATION IN THE ARTS
By men of profound mind in every age, by the most sciousness. Form and color, tone and tension and rhythm,
powerful users of language or other symbolism, who can contrast and softness and rest and motion are the ele
force us to see more than the ordinary accepted meaning ments that yield the symbolic forms which can convey
in familiar symbols. The abstractions of language, which ideas of such nameless realities. When we say that a
govern most of our normal thinking, arise from a very work has a definite feeling about it, we do not mean
fundamental, wide-spread, but little recognized phe that it either sy?nptomizes this feeling, as weeping symp-
nomenon inherent in the very nature of speech—the use tomizes an emotional disturbance in the weeper, nor
of metaphor. I shall say more about this presently. that it stimulates us to feel a certain way. What we mean
Of course, all conceptual formulation involves some is that it presents a feeling for our contemplation.
abstraction-, even ordinary expression in such sentences The production of such expressive structures requires
as: "I was in N e w York yesterday," involve a choice of some more tangible conception than the idea which is
aspects of the situation referred to, and these alone are yet inarticulate, to guide the artist's purpose. Nothing is
mentioned. A million other people were in N e w York so elusive as an unsymbolized conception. It pulsates
yesterday, too; yet my being there differed from theirs and vanishes like the very faint stars, and inspires rather
in activity, feeling, purpose, in practically everything than fixes expression. So the usual anchor for such in
except the highly abstracted fact which I mention. tuitions is an object in which the artist sees possibilities
Language abstracts from reality by the choice of things of the form he envisages and wants to create; and the
and states to which it gives names, such as "yesterday," primitive art impulse is to imitate natural forms which he
" N e w York," and "having been," as well as persons and finds expressive.
individual physical objects. Without our unconscious Yet the imitation, though faithful to what he sees, is
recognition of these abstracted concepts embodied in never a copy in an ordinary sense. It is a biassed render
words we could not talk: every experience would have ing, it records what he finds significant; if he is deeply
a proper name whose meaning would be indefinable, a absorbed in his model, the simplified or even projected
sort of subjective memory scheme. version of it is exactly what he sees, and all he sees.
The arts, like language, abstract from experience cer Primitive art, which is undistracted by theories, tends
tain aspects for our contemplation. But such abstractions to be more purely stylized and expressive than more
are not concepts that have names. Discursive speech can sophisticated work; yet the earliest writers in every
fix definable concepts better and more exactly. Artistic branch of art are naively convinced that what we call
expression abstracts aspects of the life of feeling which creation of forms is simply a careful, faithful process of
have no names, which have to be presented to sense and imitation.
intuition rather than to a word-bound, note-taking con- The imitation of objects with a difference—with the
94 9Ϊ
all-important, interpretative difference—is what we call exhausted, they are dropped. That is why conventions
treatment of the object, and all treatment serves the pur- change.
pose of making those sensuous abstractions which con- The most obvious conventions of imitation are such
stitute artistic significance. The model for the picture, devices as local color, darkened for shadow; bending
the statue, or the epic gives the work its theme, but not trees and streaming hair to indicate wind, and unstable
its meaning; the treatment of the theme is the articulation attitudes to suggest bodily action. This last device is
of a form that has an import of its own. applicable to sculpture, too, although sculpture is ex-
All technique is developed in the interest of treatment; tremely sensitive to imitative practices such as painting
and as treatment is simply the mode of imitation, and statues or even mixing different materials for realistic
a truly absorbed and active artist may be quite uncon- effects.
scious of the mode he is evolving, all naive technicians The imitative stunts of program music, from the
have taken for granted that their devices were merely cuckoo in a 12th century song to the nightingale on
modes of imitation. So the great life-line of technique Respighi's phonograph plate, have received too much
attention to require further introduction. In the modern
has been imitation, as its origin has been formalization.
dance, which undertakes to be more than a simple pat-
Technique is the power of producing a version of the
tern of so-called "steps," the choreographer naturally
model, as concrete as real existence—a vision of existence,
looks to that world-old guide to artistic creation, the
a realization of things in the world. Its aim is always
imitation of nature, and employs all such obvious helps
a definite sensuous or emotional effect, which is to be
as impersonation, costume, and above all, pantomime.
brought to perception.
Running, pursuing, evading, falling, ritual gestures, and
In the achievement of effects lies the abstractive func-
gesticulations are the stock-in-trade of the art-ballet. In
tion of art. The effect is sought because it conveys the
dramatic art, imitation reaches its height, especially
insight into human feeling that is, I think, the aim of all
with the advent of the social drama and all its realistic
art. Therefore technique is the skill of getting effects;
relatives. A play like "The Bellamy Trial" practically
and in every art we develop traditional means of "imita- takes the onlooker into an ordinary court-room to wit-
tion" to enhance certain effects that artists see in the ness an almost unabridged judicial scene. Costumes,
model and convey to those who can perceive through properties, gestures, speeches are at their maximum of
art. Such traditional means are what we call "conven- direct imitation. Such facts as that the room lacks a wall
tions." They are not "laws," for there is no reason in and that the light is somewhat exaggerated actually
the world to follow them except that the artist can use threaten to come into consciousness against such faithful
them for his own purposes. When their usefulness is realism. Speech imitations are prominent in the novel,
6
9
97
PROBLEMS OF ART
too; and beyond them we h a v e that imitation of actual plastic material of which the work is made. T o get a
thought-processes known as "stream-of-conscious-
t r i e
spatial effect through a medium of sound, or a sense of

ness technique." pure light—of dazzle of glitter or radiance—by means
Almost every technical a d v a n c e is first felt to be the of color or form, without any special illumination—
discovery of a better means o f imitation, and only later that is what I mean by transforming the appearance of
is recognized as a new form, a stylistic convention. And the model into sensory structures of another sort.
the more the mode of presentation is conditioned by the Examples may be found in all fields of art. The very
artist's conception, by the effect he desires rather than example I just mentioned—conveying light-effects
by the scientific properties of the model, the more through a medium which cannot directly copy light—is
readily it is accepted as " t r u e " by the imagination. cited by Ching Hao, a Chinese theorist of the tenth
This brings me to the special cases where technique, century: "The master of Ink can heighten or lower his
devoted to imitation for the attainment of emotively tone at will, to express the depth or shallowness of
significant effects, transcends imitation altogether, and things; creating what seems like a natural brilliancy, not
achieves the effect, so to speak, in abstraction. This derived from the line-work of the brush." (Note that
extreme type of treatment might be designated as dark and bright themselves express depth and shallow-
transformation* rather than imitation; it consists in the ness of things.) And just before this, in speaking of
rendering of a desired appearance without any actual "Harmony," by which he appears to mean Composition,
representation of it, by the production of an equivalent he says: "Harmony, without visible contours, suggests
sense-impression rather than a literally similar one, in form; omits nothing, yet escapes vulgarity." T o convey
terms of the limited, legitimate material which cannot form by a device other than outline, yet in terms of ink,
naively copy the desired property of the model. T o is that subtle achievement of effects I call "transforma-
render the effect of a sound without actual imitation of tion."
it; to convey a sense of motion by dynamic lines, with- In sculpture, the power of translating impressions of
out picturing attitudes or events that connote it; to many senses into purely sculptural terms is of paramount
convey a dramatic situation by well-timed silences importance, because of the great sensitivity of its forms
instead of exciting statements; such practices involve a to any illegitimate use. Walter Pater has left us a
transformation of the idea furnished by the model (be critical essay exactly to this point, in his well-known
the model a thing, an event, or a character), into the little book on the Renaissance, where he says, a propos
of Delia Robbia's work: "These Tuscan sculptors of
* I have spoken of it elsewhere (see P- 8 9 ) as "transcendence," but
found that this term too often aroused an expectation of some ulti- the 15th century worked for the most part in low relief.
mate mystical doctrine. . . . This system of low relief is the means by which they
9* 99
PROBLEMS OF ART
meet and overcome the special limitation of sculpture—a

completeness is Michelangelo's equivalent for colour in
limitation resulting from the material and the essential sculpture; it is his way of etherealizing pure form, of
conditions of all sculptured work, and which consists in relieving its hard realism, and communicating to it
the tendency of this work to a hard realism, a one-sided breath, pulsation, the effect of life."
presentment of mere form, that solid material which There is a very striking case of sensuous transforma-
only motion can relieve, a thing of heavy shadows, and tion in the poetry of Keats. It is a line from his "Ode to
an individuality of expression pushed to caricature. a Nightingale," which is sometimes cited as an example
Against this tendency to the hard presentment of of onomatopoiea, an imitation of the nightingale's song:
mere form trying vainly to compete with the reality of
nature itself, all noble sculpture constantly struggles: "Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
T o cease upon the midnight with no pain,
each great system of sculpture resisting it in its own
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
way. . . . The use of colour in sculpture is but an unskil-
In such an ecstasy!"
ful contrivance to effect, by borrowing from another
art, what the nobler sculpture effects by strictly appro- Oddly enough, when we consider the onomatopoetic
priate means. T o get not colour, but the equivalent of line—"pouring forth thy soul abroad"—there is no imi-
colour; to secure the expression and the play of life; to tation of a bird's song at all; no bird ever uttered the
expand the too fixed individuality of pure, unrelieved, " o " sound on which the alleged imitation is based. " O "
uncoloured form—this is the problem. . . ." And else- is about the last vowel sound that a bird's song could
where he says of Michelangelo: "In a way quite personal ever approach. What is the quality conveyed by that
and peculiar to himself which often is, and always seems, line, that assimilates it to the nightingale's song? It is the
the effect of accident, he secured for his work individu- intensification of sound achieved here by the piling of
ality and intensity of expression, while he avoided a too the successive open o's, and in the bird's song by a charac-
hard realism, that tendency to harden into caricature teristic crescendo. But note that not even the crescendo
which the representation of feeling in sculpture must is actually imitated; the end of the line need not be
always have. What time and accident, its centuries of spoken louder than the beginning; the sound-pattern
darkness under the furrows of the 'little Melian farm,' itself yields the intensification that is the essence of the
have done with singular felicity of touch for the Venus swelling song. This is, I think, the most perfectly suc-
of Melos, fraying its surface and softening its lines, . . . cessful transformation of musical sound into verbal
this effect Michelangelo gains by leaving nearly all his quality, that I know. It seems to me far more effective
sculpture in a puzzling sort of incompleteness, which than the consciously imitative "word-music" of Swin-
suggests rather than realizes actual form. . . . That in- burne, which achieves a liquid rather than a strong
musical effect. (I suspect that he wanted it to be "liquid,"
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PROBLEMS OF ART IMITATION AND TRANSFORMATION IN T H E ARTS
and that the "musical" aim is something taken for the musical rendering, is with such a difference that now
granted by critics because it is familiar in the literature it is Schubert's brook, it is Schubert's post-horn.
of poetics.) So even in music we may have legitimate imitation,
The "imitations" of music itself have so long been notably in the genre known as the German "Lied." And
a subject of debate that we need not discuss the conven- such imitation may degenerate into literalism, or rise to
tions that have grown up for the rendering of rippling the more difficult and subtle devices of transformation.
water, horses' hooves, winds and undulating seas and There is a fine instance of this higher technique, in
tolling bells. So long as the suggestive devices are en- Brahms's song, "The Smith." The accompaniment of
tirely in the realm of music, perfectly comprehensible this song elucidates the subject, with a motif of grace-
and complete without the program, the alleged or per- notes blurring staccato chords much as the rebound of
haps avowed imitation serves the same purpose here as the hammer blurs the ringing stroke. This is frank
in any other art—it offers a musical theme, and nothing imitation. But oddly enough, the vocal part alone con-
more. I don't see that this is worth a quarrel. When, veys the exciting metallic clang, without any patent
however, special sounds are admitted, not for their in- reproduction of the characteristic smithy sounds; and
timate relation to the other elements of the work, which when you analyse the effect, it is due to the hard, per-
logically develop toward such an effect, but for the fect intervals and extreme use of contrary motion. The
sake of programme-interest (like the inevitable castag- tones themselves are not metallic; the three-quarter
nettes in representations of Spanish festivity), or when rhythm, often contradicted by a two-fourth melodic
the musical structure is violated or obscured by a lot of rhythm, is not a copy; but something proper to the
literary meanings, imitation is a vice. There is no musical subject is rendered in that melody. This is a genuine
treatment of themes in the imitations rendered by a transformation of occupational noise into purely musical
elements—not a quality of tones similar to the noise, but
wind-machine or a phonograph-plate. But treatment is
relational effects that belong inherently to harmonic in-
the essence of art. Even frank imitation, in the limited
tervals and melodic progressions.
materials of an art, is always formalization. Schubert's
Once upon a time, in supervising a very young vio-
brooks weave purely musical figures, his larks sing
linist's practice, I asked him whether he knew which form
genuine tunes that ring in one's head like free melodies
of the minor scale was called the "melodic minor." After
—like all of Schubert. Yet his accompaniments are pro-
a moment's thought, he replied, "Oh, yes, that's the
grammatic; they imitate cradle and riding rhythms, sobs,
one that asks you a question going up, and tells you the
hunting-horns, proud ascents, and sinkings to the grave.
answer coming down." N o w the melodic minor is no
The theme is the skeleton of the piece; but living form,
more an imitation of rising voice-inflection than any
102
103
other ascending scale; the questioning tone does not associate with abstract ideas only names them after they
present anything like the raised steps in that mode; but have long been conceived, and have grown familiar.
the tension they create, which is promptly resolved by An idea which is genuinely new, a thing noted for the
the normal form of the descent, symbolized for that first time, has no name. There is no word to express it.
child the tension and resolution of question and answer, How can it be pointed out or mentioned for the first
suspense and release. This is the material for a musical time?
transformation. The normal way of expressing such a conception is to
Whenever a feeling is conveyed by such an indirect seek something which is a natural symbol for it, and use
rendering, it marks a height of artistic expression. Among the name of the symbol to "mean" the new idea. An
the forthright and familiar conventions of imitation, a example of this may be seen in the primitive expressions
sensuous transformation acts much as a strong metaphor for the notion of a disembodied life or personality—
does among the well-understood conventions of literal spirit, ghost, anima. T h e y are words which originally
speech: its feeling is more poignant and its meaning denote breath, shadow, or some other physical phenome-
more impressive than the import of ordinary communi- non which is perceivable but intangible. Its intangibility
cation. It conveys a summation and an essence. Why? makes it a natural symbol Tor the concept of an existence
which is actually imperceptible, non-physical. When we
For the same reason that a metaphor is apt to be more
use a word for breath to mean the element of life, we
revealing than a literal statement. So let me stop briefly
use it metaphorically, just as when we use words like
to consider the function of metaphor, because it is more
"brilliance," "enlightenment," and other expressions
familiar, more common, and more obvious than the
literally referring to light, to denote intelligence. Origi-
phenomenon I have spoken of as "transformation" in
nally these are all metaphors directly conveying an
art. In the history of language, in the growth of human
image; and it is the image that expresses the new insight,
understanding, the principle of metaphorical expression
the nameless idea that is meant. The image, the thing
plays a vastly greater role than most people realize. For
actually named, is the literal meaning of the word; the
it is the natural instrument of our greatest mental
metaphorical sense is the new concept which (when it
achievement—abstract thinking.
is first encountered) no word in the existing vocabulary
A t first blush it may appear as a paradox that meta- literally denotes.
phor, which enriches poetry and prophecy with con- The power of abstraction is an essential human trait.
crete imagery, should be an instrument of abstraction. If many images, each of which naturally symbolizes a
Yet that is its true nature; it makes us conceive things in certain idea, are brought together, this common signifi-
abstraction; the bloodless abstract language we usually cance shines forth more and more clearly, like the one
104
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IMITATION AND TRANSFORMATION IN T H E ARTS
PROBLEMS OF ART
than one expression. Hence its heightened import, its
meaning of Pharaoh's three dreams. Gradually the
poignancy and subtlety. It underlines the abstractive
meaning can be grasped apart from its many concrete
power of art—the "significance" which Clive Bell refers
embodiments; that is the process of abstraction. But by
to in his rather cryptic notion of "significant form,"
the time such an indirectly known meaning receives a
the thing which Coleridge called "secondary meaning,"
name of its own, it is no longer a new idea; it is familiar,
and Flaubert called the "idea" of a work. It is, I think,
and therefore prosaic. Its conventional name is an
the quintessence which so-called "abstract art" seeks to
abstract word.
convey, and which the non-imitative arts have always
The meanings which pure visual forms (apart from
expressed: the morphology of vital and emotive experi
their practical significance) and musical patterns convey
ence. Art is the articulation, not the stimulation or
are nameless because they are logically uncongenial to
catharsis, of feeling; and the height of technique is
the structure of language. T h e y will presumably never
simply the highest power of this sensuous revelation
have literal handles. So their very life, for our conscious
and wordless abstraction.
ness, is in their artistic embodiments. For the artist, these
vital meanings are naturally expressed in his model; in
his treatment of the model they are emphasized and
clarified. That is the logic of his "style." The effects he
creates are those sensuous experiences which are word
less, unanalysable symbols for the life of feeling.
Now, a technique of imitation is a means of recreating
those aspects of the object in which the artist finds
emotive meaning; it is therefore the normal practice of
representative art, as direct denotation is the normal
practice of speech. But when the significant aspect of
the model—the crescendo of the nightingale's song, the
warm color of flesh—is itself indirectly rendered by a
device that abstracts only its significance without copying
it directly, that is, when it is transformed into properties
of words or of marble, its artistic value shines forth like
the intuitively perceived meaning of a metaphor in
language—something beyond the expressive medium,
stripped of its accidental embodiment by having more
ιοί
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PRINCIPLES OF ART AND CREATIVE DEVICES
theorists in a given time say about art, and what the

artists of that time seem to assume. The same goes, of
course, for different places at any time, for instance
Greece, Egypt, and China in 600 B.C., or France and
Russia in 1950 A.D.
PRINCIPLES OF ART AND It is possible, I think, to formulate a definition of an
that applies to everything artists have made, and made
CREATIVE DEVICES with varying success. That means that the concept of
art implicit in practice—that is, "what the artists seem
to assume"—does not vary from age to age and from
place to place. I think it is safe to say that all art is the
creation of "expressive forms," or apparent forms ex-
pressive of human feeling. That definition applies to the
primitive "Venuses" and the Venus of Milo and Bran-
IT has often enough been remarked that the concept of cusi's "Bird," and to the Psalms of David and Herrick's
art changes from age to age; that different nations, dif- "Fair Daffodils" and Joyce's Ulysses, to Sakuntala and
ferent epochs, even different schools within one time and ' Tartuffe and The Emperor Jones and The Play's the
place, have different notions of what art is, and therefore Thing, and to the famous cave paintings and the polite
different judgments of what is or is not art; and that portraits that Reynolds and Sargent painted, and to
consequently no one can say, once and for all, what art ancient temple chants and African drum music and
is, what is meant by the term "a work of art," nor what Mozart and Wagner. It defines, I think, what all artists
is or is not to pass for such a work. have always done. There is little gained by calling "art"
only what we judge to be good. Some art is bad; also,
If these sweeping statements were true there would
a work may be unsuccessful, or rather poor. But where
be little point in either criticizing and teaching art, or
there is any artistic intent (whether avowed, exclusive
in philosophizing about it (or even producing it). But
they are almost all too sweeping to be true, or, for that artistic intent, or unconscious artistic impulse) there
matter, to be false. will be some artistic result, i.e., some expressive form.
The main point is that this definition includes every kind
Let us begin with the first statement: that the concept
of art. Whether a work is good or bad depends on other
of art changes from age to age. H o w to we determine
things than the artistic intent. But whether it is art
what is, in any age, the concept of art? There are, for
depends on its maker's desire to compose it into a form
most ages, two main sources of information: what
1 op
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PROBLEMS OF ART PRINCIPLES OF ART AND CREATIVE DEVICES
that expresses his idea of a feeling or a whole nexus of I don't know, since in fact he was influenced—en-
feeling—or, as he would be likely to say, "that has some lightened, but also deeply confused—by Barnes.
feeling in it," or "has life." M y reason for rejecting the definition of art as all
Yet this broad definition excludes some things that craft is pragmatic. Directors of art museums would go
theorists have sometimes included in the category of crazy if they had to exhibit the pies and jellies that win
"works of art." Irwin Edman defined art as "the realm of prizes at country fairs, and the nylons and dishmops
all controlled treatment of material, practical or other." and cigarettes that are definitely superior to anything
He was, of course, in good company; Plato spoke of else in the world. You can't use such a broad definition
catering, shoemaking, and medicine as "arts," and called in museology. Secondly, foundations that sponsor the
business "the art of payment." But in Plato's discourses arts do not give grants to famous chefs and dressmakers,
the word was clearly understood in two senses. When to pharmacologists, or even to surgeons, who have
Aristotle classified the arts as "perfect" and "imperfect" developed some of the highest skills of which humanity
he assumed the distinction which we make by the clumsy at present can boast. Popular usage is not a decisive
term "fine arts" for the arts he meant. Edman, however, measure of meanings, but to defy it does demand some
explicitly denied the distinction. He said, in Arts and the special reason. Above all, I find the broad definition
Man, "It is for purely accidental reasons that the fine philosophically poor, because it raises no specific prob-
arts have been singled out to be almost identical with lems of art through which general ideas about art might
Art. For in painting and sculpture, music and poetry,
be developed.
there is so nice and so explicit a utilization of materials
Art is craftsmanship, but to a special end: the creation
. . . that we turn to examples of these arts for Art and
of expressive forms—visually, audibly, or even imagi-
in them find our aesthetic experience most intense and
pure." natively perceivable forms that set forth the nature of
human feeling. This statement, I think, is simply true
Actually, the sensory or literally "aesthetic" experi-
or false for all places and times; if it was false when
ence of perfectly used materials is perhaps keenest in
the caveman painted their pictures—sacred, or magical,
our appreciation of food and drink. Edman had too
or just ostentatious, intended to simulate wealth, or
much artistic sense to draw his own conclusions, but
whatever they were—if it was false then, it is false now.
they have been drawn; Baker Brownell in The Seven
If those pictures did not achieve their stylization and
Lively Arts includes cooking, and Willem Thieme makes
beauty by being expressive of an apprehended feeling,
cooking and philosophy the lowest and highest stations,
respectively, in the gamut of the arts. John Dewey then the theory is wrong, and no change in human affairs
unconfused by Albert Barnes might have ranged ballet will make it right today.
and golf, and sculpture and hairdressing, all on a par; But the intriguing thing about this basic concept of
no
art is that all the major problems of art show up in The first factor is the most important. The range of
relation to it, not one by one, but in direct or remote its variability is enormous; I think the only restriction
connection with each other: the autonomy of the several on it is that all artistic ideas are ideas of something felt,
arts and their very intricate relations to one another, or rather: of life as felt, for they need not be ideas of
which are much more than the possession of some com feelings that have actually occurred. The import of art
mon features or equivalent elements; the origins and is imaginable feeling and emotion, imaginable subjective
significance of styles; historical continuity, tradition and existence. It is something quite different from daydream,
revolt, motivation and conscious purpose and extraneous which is imagined experience eliciting real emotion,
aims, self-expression, representation, abstraction, social somewhat like, somewhat unlike the emotion that a
influences, religious functions, changes of taste and all similar experience in reality would produce. In dream
the problems of criticism, the old wrangle about rules and personal phantasy a feeling is evoked; in a work of
of art, and the deprecation of "mere technique." There art it is conceived, formulated, presented. It is the work
are more problems that arise systematically from these, of art as a whole that symbolizes an emotional process—
but the ones I have named have already arisen at quite anything, from the rhythmic feeling of thinking a com
definite points, and are enough to make me dizzy, so plex but clear, brief thought, to the whole sense of life,
let them suffice as examples. love, selfhood, and recognition of death that is probably
The concept of art as the creation of expressive the largest scope of our feeling. The relation between
forms to present ideas of feeling (or of what is sometimes feeling presented and understood, and feeling activated
called "inner life," "subjective reality," "consciousness" by beholding and understanding the image of inner life,
—there are many designations for it) is a constant, but is another interesting problem that arises from this basic
the making of those forms is so varied that few people concept of art, and cannot be pursued here. It is prob
realize how many factors in history and in any actual, ably a highly complex affair.
chance setting bear on it. I think most of the differences The feelings that interest people have their limitations,
of opinion about artistic aims, canons, and standards arise their day and place, just as the things and facts and
on the level of these variables, which are too often taken activities that interest them do. The emotional- patterns
for constants. The chief variable factors are: we want to appreciate are primarily our own—not per
sonally, but culturally. When our culture reaches out
( ι ) The ideas artists want to express.
suddenly beyond its old bounds and makes contacts with
(2) The discovered devices of artistic creation.
(3) The opportunities offered by the physical other cultures we become interested in new possibilities
and cultural environment. of feeling. It takes a while, but there comes a point when
( 4 ) Public response. the beauty of an exotic art becomes apparent to us; then
112 U3
we have grasped the humanity of another culture, not European culture it is probably as old as liturgical
only theoretically but imaginatively. The discovery of speech and incantation. Representation in plastic art is
beauty in Negro art, Polynesian art, and Alaskan art another. Our own history of art is so full of it that it is
marked such extensions of emotional insight in our own practically taken for granted, and we have in the past
age. been more aware of its variants, or styles, than of repre-
Feeling to be expressed dictates what £lie Faure called sentation itself as a picture-making or statue-making
"The Spirit of the Forms." But the life of art is more device. But in certain parts of the world where plastic
detailed and involved than this big movement of the arts exist, representation of creatures or things is used
Spirit. Sometimes quite fortuitous things enter in to give very sparingly (e.g., in Maori art), if at all, and some of
it a historic turn—not things that alter the pattern of our own artists today find it dispensable.
feeling, like cultural decay, new religions, commercial T o create perceivable expressive forms is a principle
expansion, crusades or other social events, but such of art; but the use of any device, no matter how im-
things as the invention of oil pigments, the finding of portant, is a principle of creation in art. I think the belief
Carrara marble, the construction of the pipe organ in that the concept of art changes from age to age rests
the high vaulted church. The influence of available art on the fallacy of taking the most general principles of
materials may easily be over-emphasized; what is much artistic technique operative in some particular period
more influential, I think, is the discovery of fundamental and culture as the principles of art itself. That is what
artistic devices. Aristotle did in the Poetics; he had a fundamental and
The introduction of a major device gives rise to a clear understanding of the principles on which Greek
tradition in art. A tradition is usually something longer- drama was constructed. He also could see some fairly
lived than a style; styles may come and go within its obvious parallels between dramatic structure and epic
history. Styles, too, are relative to devices, for the structure; in the epic one can find all the special forms
variation and combination and handing-down of devices (lyric, pastoral, ode, etc.) incidentally. So he was con-
is so great a process that we meet it as basic technique, tent to accept those principles of construction—the re-
composition, choice of subject-matter, idiom, "form" in lation of plot to characters and the relations, rhythmic
the narrow sense in which we classify epics, ballads, or other, between action and diction, the familiar
sonnets, etc., as "literary forms," and it may meet us as divisions of the action, the famous "unities," and all the
"influence." The most powerful devices give rise to what major devices of building Greek tragedy—as the ulti-
may be called the "great traditions" in the arts; metric mate principles of poetry itself.
composition of words is such a basic device, giving rise Looking for a moment to another art than poetry,
to a great tradition, in poetry. In the history of Indo- the same situation confronts us in Heinrich Schenker's
114 US
PROBLEMS OF ART
PRINCIPLES OF ART AND CREATIVE DEVICES
analysis of the principles of music. The breaking up of ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements
tones, or sounds of definite pitch, into their constituent are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree
overtones that determine the natural stations through
of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so
which a melody moves, and the contrapuntal develop-
called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composi-
ment on this melodic scaffold, or Urlinie, that gives rise
tion of any great length. . . . This great work, in fact
to harmonic progression, seemed to him the lowest
[his direct reference is to Paradise Lost], is to be re-
terms to which the fabric of music could be analyzed.
garded as poetical, only when . . . we view it merely as
But it follows, of course, that there can be no music
a series of minor poems. If . . . we read i t . . . at a single
without definite pitch—without, as he says, "harmony,
sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of excite-
that belongs to nature, and melody, that belongs to art."
ment and depression." He did not even hesitate, in fine,
The vaguely bounded glissando of Hawaiian song and
to say: "In regard to the 'Iliad,' we have, if not positive
the drums of Africa are to him not music.
proof, at least very good reason, for believing it intended
What Schenker has actually discovered, however, are as a series of lyrics; but, granting the epic intention, I
the basic devices that have begotten the great tradition can say only that the work is based in an imperfect sense
of European music. These are not the principles of all
of art."
music. Watusi drums, monotone voices, even conches
This is the most heroic operation I have ever seen
and rams' horns can make music. But the construction
performed on the world's masterpieces to fit them into
of melodies in the framework of harmonically related
the compass of a highly special theory. What Poe was
tones is probably the most powerful principle of musical
expounding was, of course, at best a principle of lyric
creation that has ever been found.
composition, involved wherever a poem is made to ren-
The apparent uncertainty as to what art is, or what der a single emotional experience. It was in keeping
some particular art really is, that arises from taking prin-
with his own straight-channelled talents, perhaps, that
ciples of construction for the defining function of art
he saw no other poetic aims. He had less historical
itself, can be illustrated in every domain. But let us re-
excuse than Aristotle for regarding principles of creation,
turn to poetry, where we can find examples enough of
or construction, as principles of art. But then, he was a
warring opinions.
lesser man.
Nothing could be further from Aristotle's conception A third normative theory that comes naturally to
of poetic creation than that which Poe proposed in his mind, because, although later than Poe's essay, it repre-
famous lecture, The Poetic Principle. " A poem," he sents one of the very norms Poe was attacking as spu-
said there, "deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, rious, is Matthew Arnold's poetics. Arnold has summed
by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the up in one line his conception of poetry, "as a criti-
116
cism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism world "all that which it . . . has ever been enabled at
by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty."* A once to understand and to feel as poetic."
criticism of life; that contrasts brusquely, indeed, with Here we are indeed on very slippery ground. The
Poe's statement: " I would define, in brief, the Poetry of word "Taste" has done its share to make it precarious.
words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole The old adage, "De gustibus non disputandum," has
arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Con- firmly established the belief that beauty is simply what
science, it has only collateral relations. Unless incident- satisfies taste, and as beauty is artistic value, such value
ally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or depends on taste, just as the value of coffee or candy
with Truth." does; and it certainly seems, on this basis, like pure
Here we seem to have three different notions of what snobbism to set up the taste of a few as more important
poetry is, and three different standards for its evaluation. than that of the many—that is, to make anything but the
But when you read these authors, chosen more or less most popular taste the measure of good art.
at random, a little more closely, you find that the idea But, rather than subscribe to what seems to me a
of what poetry is has in each case been taken for granted, patently false conclusion, I would abandon the metaphor
and is implicitly supposed to be known; and that, more- of "taste." It gives artistic experience a false simplicity,
over, the knowledge of it is intuitive, so there is nothing and overemphasizes the pleasure-component that it has
more to say about it. Arnold, of all people, had no busi- in common with gustatory sensations. So I shall speak
ness to perpetrate a circular definition: yet he defines of the perception of beauty; and once we stop relating
poetry as a criticism of life controlled by the laws of beauty to an irrationaUtaste, beauty is not indefinable.
poetic truth and poetic beauty. What is "poetic" can Louis Arnaud Reid, in his A Study in Aesthetics
only be directly felt. Aristotle remarks that Homer un- ( 1 9 3 1 ) , said, "Beauty is just expressiveness." Upon the
derstood the laws of organic composition b y instinct, definition of art proposed at the beginning of this
and in fact excelled all other poets in the same way ' lengthening lecture—"Art is the creation of forms ex-
( 1 4 5 1 b ) ; and elsewhere he says that the greatest thing pressive of human feeling"—Reid's dictum comes almost
in poetry is to be "a master of metaphor," which cannot like a scholium. And, moreover, it has the pragmatic
be learned from others because it involves logical in- virtues by which I advertise my own theory. It explains
tuition ( 1 4 5 9 a ) . As for Poe, he says explicitly that the why the finding of beauty must be intuitive; all seman-
perception of Beauty is a separate faculty, which he calls tical insights are. Such finding is a perception of import,
"Taste," and sometimes the "Poetic Sentiment," and akin to that of meaning. Also, the conception of beauty
describes as an immortal instinct, which has given the as the expressiveness of a form explains why beauty
* " T h e Study of Poetry," in Essays in Criticism.
may go unperceived where, none the less, it exists;
Il8 119
why maturity enables us to appreciate what was once of sculpture. Women making pots undoubtedly made
too strange, or too unpleasant in some way, or perhaps them for the sake of domestic uses, but they shaped them
too enigmatic, to elicit our response to it .as an expressive in fine, voluminous curves for art's sake. They may
form. And especially, it makes accessible to investigation often have decorated pots, fabrics, and furniture with
the reasons why art, throughout the ages, has been magic symbols to keep spooks away, but in the hands of
charged with one office after another, didactic, religious, an artist such symbolic representations offer, above all,
therapeutic, and what not, as often as it has been absolved an occasion for design; and two pots bearing the same
of any and all such functions and set up on a pedestal symbols, and made of the same clay, may be worlds
(or an easel) all by itself. apart in artistic value. Ritual has always been a natural
What guides one's imagination in drawing or carving and fertile source of art. Its first artistic product is the
a line, establishing a proportion in the building of a dance. Ecstatic people probably pranced before they
chicken coop or the planning of a temple, or in using danced; but the intuitive perception of expressive forms
words to create the image of an event (which may be in that prancing invited composition, the making of
the occurrence of a thought, or a passionate utterance), dance. W e know on venerable authority that the Greek
is intuition. But a guiding sense is not in itself a motive drama rose when the sacred dances, embodying mythical
for making an expressive form. The motive has usually motifs, gave it opportunity. The worship was in a spirit
been supplied by other interests. This brings us to the of pity for humanity and fear of divine powers; and
third great variable factor in the life of art: the opportu- Aristotle imputes to tragedy the prime office of inspir-
nities offered to artists by the cultural and physical ing pity and fear.
environment. Throughout the ages, the practice of artistic creation
Probably by far the greater part of the world's art has has seized on whatever occasions life offered; and artistic
been made upon some fortuitous occasion, that is, not excellence has usually been felt as an enhancement of
with the conscious intention of creating a work of art, whatever other excellence the constructed object had.
but with the intention of making or performing or That explains the difficulty critics have often encoun-
articulating something otherwise important. People gifted tered in sorting out the artistic from the non-artistic
with artistic intuition take any such occasion to create values. The beauty of a sculptured Virgin that seems to
enhance her godly grace is hard to judge apart from that
expressive form. Look at the intricate, strong, handsome
effect, which may even have been the clearest aim that
compositions of Alaskan totem poles; their makers prob-
the sculptor consciously entertained; and a portrait that
ably had no art theory at all, but to make the post
seems to render the sitter's character as his friends know
look impressive, holy, and alive they used every principle
or remember it—which the painter may have consciously
of composition and animation that could serve the cause
120 121
made his business—is naturally thought to be beautiful making good poetry. The great opportunity for poetic
on that account. But if it is beautiful, it is so because the art really came in a later age with the printed book and
painter managed to use this portrayal of character as a the popular practice of reading. Artists are generally
means of organizing subtler pictorial elements and cre- opportunists, like everybody else in his own business,
ating a more vital plastic effect than he could have but artistic impulses can also be conscious, and motivate
achieved by ignoring the telling details of the model's the work itself. The fact that they are often unconscious,
appearance. however, and that artistic principles are recognized and
In poetry, the confusion of artistic with propositional used intuitively while the artist's discursive ideas are
significance sometimes seems to be past all redemption. disporting themselves in quite other directions, seems to
Poetry is made of language, and language is normally a me to account for the fact that the best artists have
means of imparting discursive ideas—information, ad- often thought they were doing the oddest things.
vice, comments, directions, and whatever else. Also, the The variable factors in art—which include all the prin-
literal meaning of words and sentences plays a major ciples of construction, and the possible ways of feeling
part in making poetry out of language. Poetic criticism, that guide their use—are so many that they offer a prac-
more than any other, is torn between the judgment of tically unlimited field of study. Every place has its art,
artistic aims, means, and achievement, and the judgment every time brings something forth that belongs to it
of what the poet is "telling" the reader; between the alone, every artist changes the progress of art. But to
evaluation of something created and something asserted. recognize as constants the principles of art itself seems
Matthew Arnold's "criticism of life" is such a discursive to me to make sense out of those differences, and open
message. Perhaps he himself was misled by an unhappy an indefinite number of problems to empirical or his-
phrase. Poetry does, indeed, make life appear in certain torical investigation that have often appeared an unre-
ways, but that is not commenting on it. Comment itself lated jumble of "isms"—a great collection of points of
when used as a poetic element is not the poet's comment,
view, but all too often with nothing much in sight.
but the imaginary speaker's who makes it in the poem.
His name may be simply, " I " ; but that again is part of
the poetic creation.
Finally, let us not ignore the fact that much art is made
without waiting for any occasion; that sometimes sheer
imagination goes to work. I don't know what made
Chaucer write his tales, or what purpose Dante set
himself in writing the Divine Comedy, besides that of
122 12$
THE ART SYMBOL AND T H E SYMBOL IN ART
rational cogitation; that is why we call such thinking
9
"discursive."
But discursive symbols offer no apt model of primitive
forms of feeling. There has been a radical change—a
special organization—in the making of rationality, per-
THE ART SYMBOL AND THE haps under the influence of very specialized perception,
SYMBOL IN ART perhaps under some other controlling condition. T o ex-
press the forms of what might be called "unlogicized"
(AN INFORMAL TALK AT THE AUSTIN RIGGS PSYCHIATRIC mental life (a term we owe to Professor Henry M. Shef-
CENTRE, 1 9 5 6 ) fer of Harvard), or what is usually called the "life of
feeling," requires a different symbolic form.
This form, I think, is characteristic of art and is, indeed,
the essence and measure of art. If this be so, then a work
of art is a symbolic form in another way than the one (or
T H E problems of semantics and logic seem to fit into ones) usually conceded to it. W e commonly think of a
one frame, those of feeling into another. But somewhere, work of art as representing something, and of its symbolic
of course, mentality has arisen from more primitive vital function, therefore, as representation. But this is not
processes. Somehow they belong into one and the same what I mean; not even secret or disguised representation.
scientific frame. I am scouting the possibility that rational- Many works represent nothing whatever. A building, a
ity arises as an elaboration of feeling. pot, a tune is usually beautiful without intentionally rep-
Such a hypothesis leads one, of course, to the possible resenting anything; and its unintentional representation
forms of feeling, and raises the problem of how they can may be found in bad and ugly pieces too. But if it is
be conceived and abstractly handled. Every theoretical beautiful it is expressive; what it expresses is not an idea
construction requires a model. Especially if you want to of some other thing, but an idea of a feeling. Representa-
get into elaborate structures you have to have a model— tional works, if they are good art, are so for the same
not an instance, but a symbolic form that can be manip- reason as non-representational ones. They have more
ulated, to convey, or perhaps to hold, your conceptions. than one symbolic function—representation, perhaps
Language is the symbolic form of rational thought. It after two kinds, and also artistic expression, which is
is more than that, but at least it can be fairly well pared presentation of ideas of feeling.
down to abstract the elements of such thought and cogni- There are many difficulties connected with the thesis
tion. The structure of discourse expresses the forms of that a work of art is primarily an expression of feeling—
124 125
PROBLEMS OF ART THE ART SYMBOL AND T H E SYMBOL IN ART
an "expression'' in the logical sense, presenting the fabric "significance" of a work, by virtue of which some early
of sensibility, emotion, and the strains of more concerted twentieth-century writers called it "significant form,"
cerebration, for our impersonal cognition—that is, in is what is expressed. Since, however, signification is not
abstracto. This sort of symbolization is the prime office its semantic function—it is quite particularly not a signal
of works of art, by virtue of which I call a work of art — I prefer Professor Melvin Rader's phrase, which he
an expressive form. proposed in a review of Feeling and Form: "expressive
In Feeling and Form I called it "the art symbol." This form." This, he said, would be a better term than "the
aroused a flood of criticism from two kinds of critics— art symbol." I have used it ever since. Similarly, Profes
those who misunderstood the alleged symbolic function sor Ernest Nagel objected to calling that which it ex
and assimilated everything I wrote about it to some presses its "meaning," since it is not "meaning" in any
previous, familiar theory, either treating art as a genuine of the precise senses known to semanticists; since then
language or symbolism, or else confusing the art symbol I have spoken of the import of an expressive form. This
with the symbol in art as known to iconologists or to is the more convenient as the work may have meanings
modern psychologists; and, secondly, those critics who besides.
understood what I said but resented the use of the word As a work of art is an expressive form somewhat like
"symbol" that differed from accepted usage in current a symbol, and has import which is something like mean
semantical writings. Naturally the critics who under ing, so it makes a logical abstraction, but not in the
stood what I said were the more influential ones; and familiar way of genuine symbols—perhaps, indeed, a
their objections brought home the nature and extent of pseudo-abstraction. The best way to understand all these
the difference between the function of a genuine symbol pseudo-semantics is to consider what a work of art is
and a work of art. The difference is greater than I had and does, and then compare it with language, and its
realized before. Yet the function of what I called "the doings with what language (or any genuine symbolism)
art symbol"—which is, in every case, the work of art does.
as a whole, and purely as such—is more like a symbolic The expressive form, or art symbol, is, as I said before,
function than like anything else. A work of art is ex the work of art itself, as it meets the eye (let us, for sim
pressive in the w a y a proposition is expressive—as the plicity's sake, stay in the realm of pictorial art). It is the
formulation of an idea for conception. A n idea may be visible form, the apparition created out of paint deployed
well expressed or badly expressed. Similarly, in a work on a ground. The paint and the ground themselves dis
of art, feeling is well expressed or badly, and the work appear. One does not see a picture as a piece of spotted
accordingly is good, or poor, or even bad—note that in canvas, any more than one sees a screen with shadows
the last case an artist would condemn it as false. The on it in a movie. Whether there be things and persons
126 12η
PROBLEMS OF ART THE ART SYMBOL AND T H E SYMBOL IN ART
in the picture or not, it presents volumes in a purely- It may be a solid material form like the pot, or an illusory
created space. These volumes define and organize the o\y"-.ct like Hamlet's cloudy weasel. But it is a form for
pictorial space which they are, in fact, creating; the perception.
purely visual space seems to be alive with their balanced A work of art is such an individual form given directly
or strained interactions. The lines that divide them to perception. But it is a special kind of form, since it
(which may be physically drawn, or implied) create a seems to be more than a visual phenomenon—seems,
rhythmic unity, for what they divide they also relate, indeed, to have a sort of life, or be imbued with feeling,
to the point of complete integration. If a picture is suc- or somehow, without being a genuine practical object,
cessful it presents us with something quite properly, yet present the beholder with more than an arrangement
even though metaphorically, called "living form." of sense data. It carries with it something that people
The word "form" connotes to many people the idea have sometimes called a quality (Clive Bell called "sig-
of a dead, empty shell, a senseless formality, lip-service, nificant form" a quality), sometimes an emotional con-
and sometimes an imposed rule to which actions, speeches, tent, or the emotional tone of the work, or simply its
and works must conform. Many people think of form life. This is what I mean by artistic import. It is not one
as a set of prescriptions when they speak of art forms, of the qualities to be distinguished in the work, though
such as the sonata form or the rondo in music, the our perception of it has the immediacy of qualitative
French ballade in poetry, etc. In all these uses the word experience; artistic import is expressed, somewhat as
"form" denotes something general, an abstracted con- meaning is expressed in a genuine symbol, yet not exactly
cept that may be exemplified in various instances. This so. The analogy is strong enough to make it legitimate,
is a legitimate and widespread meaning of "form." But even though easily misleading, to call the work of art
it is not the meaning Bell and Fry had in mind, and the art symbol.
which I propose here. When they spoke of "significant The difference, however, between an art symbol and
form" (or, as now I would say, "expressive form") they a genuine symbol are of great interest and importance,
meant a visible, individual form produced by the inter- for they illuminate the relations that obtain between
action of colors, lines, surfaces, lights and shadows, or many kinds of symbols, or things that have been so
whatever entered into a specific work. They used the called, and show up the many levels on which symbolic
word in the sense of something formed, as sometimes and pseudo-symbolic functions may lie. I think a study
wonderful figures of soft color and melting contours of artistic expressiveness shows up a need of a more
are formed by clouds, or a spiral like a coiled spring is adaptable, that is to say more general, definition of
formed by the growth of a fern shoot; as a pot is "symbol" than the one accepted in current semantics and
formed out of clay, and a landscape out of paint spots. analytical philosophy. But we had better defer this
128 129
PROBLEMS OF ART THE ART SYMBOL AND THE SYMBOL ΓΝ ART
problem to a later point. Let us, for the time being, call which is not to refer to things and communicate facts,
a genuine symbol whatever meets the strictest definition. but to express ideas; and this, in turn, involves a deeper
Here is a definition offered by Ernest Nagel, in an psychological process, the formulation of ideas, or con
article called "Symbolism and Science": " B y a symbol ception itself. Conception—giving form and connection,
I understand any occurrence (or type of occurrence), clarity and proportion to our impressions, memories, and
usually linguistic in status, which is taken to signify objects of judgment—is the beginning of all rationality.
something else by way of tacit or explicit conventions Conception itself contains the elementary principles of
or rules of language." knowledge: that an object of thought keeps its identity
A word, say a familiar common noun, is a symbol of (as Aristotle put it, " A = A " ) , that it may stand in many
this sort. I would say that it conveys a concept, and relations to other things, that alternative possibilities ex
refers to, or denotes, whatever exemplifies that concept. clude each other, and one decision entails another. Con
The word "man" conveys what we call the concept of ception is the first requirement for thought.
"man," and denotes any being that exemplifies the con This basic intellectual process of conceiving things
cept—i.e., any man. in connection belongs, I think, to the same deep level of
Now, words—our most familiar and useful symbols the mind as symbolization itself. That is the level where
—are habitually used not in isolation, but in complex imagination is born. Animal intelligence or response to
concepts of states of affairs, rather than isolated things, signs, of course, goes further back than that. The process
and refer to facts or possibilities or even impossibilities: of symbolic presentation is the beginning of human men
those bigger units are descriptions and statements and tality, "mind" in a strict sense. Perhaps that beginning
other forms of discourse. occurs at the stage of neural development where speech
In discourse, another function of symbols comes into originates, and with speech the supreme talent of en-
play, that is present but not very evident in the use of visagement.
words simply to name things. This further function is Response to stimuli, adaptation to conditions may
the expression of ideas about things. A thing cannot be occur without any envisagement of anything. Thought
asserted b y a name, only mentioned. A s soon as you make arises only where ideas have taken shape, and actual or
an assertion you are symbolizing some sort of relation possible conditions imagined. T h e word "imagined" con
between concepts of things, or maybe things and prop tains the key to a new world: the image. I think the
erties, such as: "The grapes are sour." " A l l men are popular notion of an image as a replica of a sense impres
born equal." "I hate logic." Assertions, of course, need sion has made epistemologists generally miss the most
not be true—that is, they need not refer us to facts. important character of images, which is that they are
That brings us to the second great office of symbols, symbolic. That is why, in point of sensuous character,
ι jo *3>
PROBLEMS OF ART THE ART SYMBOL AND THE SYMBOL IN ART
they may be almost indescribably vague, fleeting, frag- office of symbols—their power of formulating experi-
mentary, or distorted; they may be sensuously altogether ence, and presenting it objectively for contemplation,
unlike what they represent. W e think of mathematical logical intuition, recognition, understanding. That is artic-
relations in images that are just arbitrarily posited sym- ulation, or logical expression. And this function every
bols; but these symbols are our mathematical images. good work of art does perform. It formulates the appear-
T h e y may be visual or auditory or what not, but func- ance of feeling, of subjective experience, the character of
tionally they are images, that articulate the logical rela- so-called "inner life," which discourse-—the normal use
tions we contemplate by means of them. of words—is peculiarly unable to articulate, and which
The great importance of reference and communication therefore we can only refer to in a general and quite
by means of symbols has led semanticists to regard these superficial way. The actual felt process of life, the ten-
uses as the defining properties of symbols—that is, to sions interwoven and shifting from moment to moment,
think of a symbol as essentially a sign which stands for
the flowing and slowing, the drive and directedness of
something else and is used to represent that thing in dis-
desires, and above all the rhythmic continuity of our self-
course. This preoccupation has led them to neglect, or
hood, defies the expressive power of discursive symbol-
even miss entirely, the more primitive function of sym-
ism. The myriad forms of subjectivity, the infinitely
bols, which is to formulate experience as something
complex sense of life, cannot be rendered linguistically,
imaginable in the first place—to fix entities, and formu-
that is, stated. But they are precisely what comes to light
late facts and the fact-like elements of thought called
in a good work of art (not necessarily a "masterpiece";
"fantasies." This function is articulation. Symbols articu-
there are thousands of works that are good art without
late ideas. Even such arbitrarily assigned symbols as mere
being exalted achievements). A work of art is an expres-
names serve this purpose, for whatever is named becomes
sive form, and vitality, in all its manifestations from sheer
an entity in thought. Its unitary symbol automatically
sensibility to the most elaborate phases of awareness and
carves it out as a unit in the world pattern.
emotion, is what it may express.
N o w let us return to the Art Symbol. I said before
But what is meant by saying it does not connote a
that it is a symbol in a somewhat special sense, because
concept or denote its instances? What I mean is that a
it performs some symbolic functions, but not all; espe-
genuine symbol, such as a word, is only a sign; in
cially, it does not stand for something else, nor refer to
appreciating its meaning our interest reaches beyond it
anything that exists apart from it. According to the usual
to the concept. The word is just an instrument. Its
definition of "symbol," a work of art should not be classed
meaning lies elsewhere, and once we have grasped its
as a symbol at all. But that usual definition overlooks
connotation or identified something as its denotation we
the greatest intellectual value and, I think, the prime
do not need the word any more. But a work of art does
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PROBLEMS OF ART T::E ART SYMBOL AND THE SYMBOL IN ART
not point us to a meaning beyond its own presence. analyze what they contribute to the image, it is not
What is expressed cannot be grasped apart from the possible to assign them any of its import apart from
sensuous or poetic form that expresses it. In a work of the whole. That is characteristic of organic form. The
art we have the direct presentation of a feeling, not a sign import of a work of art is its "life," which, like actual life,
that points to it. That is why "significant form" is a is an indivisible phenomenon. Who could say how much
misleading and confusing term: an Art Symbol does not of a natural organism's life is in the lungs, how much
signify, but only articulate and present its emotive con- in the legs, or how much more life would be added to us
tent; hence the peculiar impression one always gets that if we were given a lively tail to wave? The Art Symbol
feeling is in a beautiful and integral form. The work is a single symbol, and its import is not compounded of
seems to be imbued with the emotion or mood or other partial symbolic values. It is, I think, what Cecil Day
vital experience that it expresses. That is why I call it Lewis means by "the poetic image," and what some
an "expressive form," and call that which it formulates painters, valiantly battling against popular misconcep-
for us not its meaning, but its import. The import of art tions, call "the absolute image." It is the objective form
is perceived as something in the work, articulated by it of life-feeling in terms of space, or musical passage, or
but not further abstracted; as the import of a myth or other Active and plastic medium.
a true metaphor does not exist apart from its imaginative A t last we come to the issue proposed in the title of
expression. this lecture. If the A r t Symbol is a single, indivisible
The work as a whole is the image of feeling, which symbol, and its import is never compounded of contribu-
may be called the Art Symbol. It is a single organic com- tive cargoes of import, what shall we make of the fact
position, which means that its elements are not inde- that many artists incorporate symbols in their works?
pendent constituents, expressive, in their own right, of Is it a mistake to interpret certain elements in poems or
various emotional ingredients, as words are constituents pictures, novels or dances, as symbols? Are the sym-
of discourse, and have meanings in their own right, bolists, imagists, surrealists, and the countless religious
which go to compose the total meaning of the discourse. painters and poets before them all mistaken—everybody
Language is a symbolism, a system of symbols with out of step except Johnnie?
definable though fairly elastic meanings, and rules of Symbols certainly do occur in art, and in many, if
combination whereby larger units—phrases, sentences, not most, cases contribute notably to the work that in-
whole speeches—may be compounded, expressing sim- corporates them. Some artists work with a veritable riot of
ilarly built-up ideas, Art, contrariwise, is not a symbol- symbols; from the familiar halo of sacrosanct personages
ism. T h e elements in a work are always newly created to the terrible figures of the Guernica, from the obvious
with the total image, and although it is possible to rose of womanhood or the lily of chastity to the personal
l
35
symbols of T . S. Eliot, sometimes concentric as a nest used it is usually unnecessary. Whether the interpreta-
of tables, painters and poets have used symbols. Icon- tion has to be carried out or is skipped in reception of
ography is a fetrile field of research; and where no in- the total poetic image depends largely on the reader.
fluence-hunting historian has found any symbols, the T h e important point for us is that there is a literal mean-
literary critics find Bloom a symbol of Moses, and the ing (sometimes more than one) connoted by the symbol
more psychological critics find Moses a symbol of birth. that occurs in art.
They may all be right. One age revels in the use of The use of symbols in art is, in fine, a principle of
symbolism in pictures, drama, and dance, another all but construction—a device, in the most general sense of that
dispenses with it; but the fact that symbols and even word, "device." But there is a difference, often missed by
whole systems of symbols (like the gesture-symbolism theorists, between principles of construction and prin-
in Hindu dances) may occur in works of art is certainly ciples of art. The principles of art are few: the creation
patent. of what might be termed "an apparition" (this term
All such elements, however, are genuine symbols; they would bear much discussion, but we have no time for it,
have meanings, and the meanings may be stated. Symbols and I think any one conversant with the arts knows
in art connote holiness, or sin, or rebirth, womanhood, what I mean), the achievement of organic unity or
love, tyranny, and so forth. These meanings enter into "livingness," the articulation of feeling. These principles
the work of art as elements, creating and articulating its of art are wholly exemplified in every work that merits
organic form, just as its subject-matter—fruit in a the name of "art" at all, even though it be not great or
platter, horses on a beach, a slaughtered ox, or a weeping in the current sense "original" (the anonymous works
Magdalen—enter into its construction. Symbols used of ancient potters, for instance, were rarely original
in art lie on a different semantic level from the work designs). Principles of construction, on the other hand,
that contains them. Their meanings are not part of its are very many; the most important have furnished our
import, but elements in the form that has import, the basic devices, and given rise to the Great Traditions of
expressive form. The meanings of incorporated symbols art. Representation in painting, diatonic harmony in
may lend richness, intensity, repetition or reflection or a music, metrical versification in poetry are examples of
transcendent unrealism, perhaps an entirely new balance such major devices of composition. They are exemplified
to the work itself. But they function in the normal man- in thousands of works; yet they are not indispensable.
ner of symbols: they mean something beyond what they Painting can eschew representation, music can be atonal,
present in themselves. It makes sense to ask what a Hound poetry can be poetry without any metrical scaffold.
of Heaven or brown sea-girls or Yeat's Byzantium may The excited recognition and exploitation of a new
stand for, though in a poem where symbols are perfectly constructive device—usually in protest againt the tradi-
136 '37
rional devices that have been used to a point of exhaus- of all degrees of complexity, from simplest directness
tion, or even the point of corruption—is an artistic to extreme indirectness, from singleness to deep inter-
revolution. Art in our own day is full of revolutionary penetration, from perfect lucidity to the densest over-
principles. Symbols, crowding metaphorical images, in- determination. T h e y have meanings, in the full sense
direct subject-matter, dream elements instead of sights that any semanticist would accept. And those meanings,
or events of waking life, often the one presented as well as the images that convey them, enter into the
through the other, have furnished us lately with a new work of art as elements in its composition. They serve
treasure-trove of motifs that command their own treat- to create the work, the expressive form.
ments, and the result is a new dawning day in art. The
The art symbol, on the other hand, is the expressive
whole old way of seeing and hearing and word-thinking
form. It is not a symbol in the full familiar sense, for it
is sloughed off as the possibilities inherent in the modern
does not convey something beyond itself. Therefore it
devices of creation and expression unfold. In that ex-
cannot strictly be said to have a meaning; what it does
citement it is natural for the young—the young spirits,
have is import. It is a symbol in a special and derivative
I mean, who are not necessarily the people of military or
sense, because it does not fulfill all the functions of a
marriageable age—to feel that they are the generation
true symbol: it formulates and objectifies experience
that has discovered, at last, the. principles of art, and
for direct intellectual perception, or intuition, but it
that heretofore a n labored under an incubus, the false
does not abstract a concept for discursive thought. Its
principles they repudiate, so there never really was a
import is seen in it; not, like the meaning of a genuine
pure and perfectable art before. They are mistaken, of
symbol, by means of it but separable from the sign. The
course; but what of it? So were their predecessors—the
symbol in art is a metaphor, an image with overt or
Italian Camerata, the English Lake Poets, the early
covert literal signification; the art symbol is the absolute
Renaissance painters—who discovered new principles
image—the image of what otherwise would be irrational,
of artistic organization and thought they had discovered
as it is literally ineffable: direct awareness, emotion,
how to paint, or how to make real music, or genuine
vitality, personal identity—life lived and felt, the matrix
poetry, for the first time. It is we, who philosophize
of mentality.
about art and seek to understand its mission, that must
keep distinctions clear.
In summary, then, it may be said that the difference
between the Art Symbol and the symbol used in art is
a difference not only of function but of kind. Symbols
occuring in art are symbols in the usual sense, though
i9
'3'9
3
POETIC CREATION
Hobbes before him, distinguished the strictly conceptual
10 use of language in mathematics, logic, and physics from

its emotional use in religious or political harangue, and
noted the mixture of both functions in ordinary social
intercourse, language has been regarded under these two
POETIC CREATION aspects. Books have been written, courses given, and
institutes founded on the fundamental distinction be-
tween the informative and the evocative use of words.
The former is regarded as the proper, literal use that
results in meaningful statements, or genuine proposi-
tions; the latter as self-expressive, communicating the
speaker's feelings to other people who react either sympa-
POETRY is universally regarded as one of the "fine arts," thetically or antipathetically. W e are told that such utter-
like music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and dance. ances, though they sound like statements, really assert
It is an art of words. On that proposition I think all nothing; but these pseudo-propositions which have no
authorities agree. scientific meaning are said to be, nevertheless, highly
In a sense, of course, all speech is an "art of words"; important instruments of social control.
"art" in the sense in which we sometimes say of anything This doctrine, which Bertrand Russell expounded
difficult that "it's an art," or even "it's a fine art." But some forty years ago, it still in vogue. In the simplified
that is not what people mean when they class poetry form to which popular presentation has reduced it, it
among the fine arts. They mean expressly to set the is obvious enough to command general assent, and it
poetic use of language apart from its use in ordinary contains enough truth to throw fight on some rather
discourse; and in this attempt they often get deeper and bizarre phenomena, such as the ardor of other people's
deeper into the toils of semantics, psychology, and aes- patently false beliefs, the effectiveness of sheer oratory in
thetics. Fact and feeling, seeing and saying get mixed politics and in advertising, the strange social fact that
up in every conceivable combination, and yet no princi- people manage to talk together quite happily in sentences
pium divisionis emerges to distinguish the poetic function that cannot bear even the slightest degree of logical
of words from any or all the rest. T o find the source analysis. It is, indeed, a theory that lends itself admirably
of this failure and a way of deciding between poetry to popularization, and has become the main stock in
and other products of language is my purpose tonight. trade of amateur philosophers today.
Ever since Locke, and to some extent Bacon and But its wide acceptance is bought at a price. When
140 141
PROBLEMS OF ART POETIC CREATION
professional semanticists concentrate their efforts on it is uncritically assumed that the poet must be making
finding ever simpler and more graphic ways of present- the other use of his words, namely the evocative. He
ing and defending a theory, they stop working on the must be registering his emotional reactions to the subject
theory itself. They tend to ignore its difficulties beyond of his poem, trying to make us have similar reactions,
those which a general public would perceive and ques- and/or pronouncing value judgments in non-literal
tion. The danger of simplification is that it shelves the pseudo-propositions. So we read, in current poetics and
more abstruse problems and creates the appearance that criticism, that the poet takes us into his confidence,
they could easily be resolved if one wanted to expand that he tells us things between the lines, enlists our
one's exposition. The theory of the emotive use of sympathy for his feelings, and imparts his ultimate
language, for instance, employs the concept of self- religious, moral, and metaphysical judgments "through
expression, i.e., completion of the motor arc by speech, the language of the heart," that is to say, through the
the concept of suggestion, or natural effect of self- evocative use of words.
expressive behavior, and the concept of communica- In reading such semantical studies of poetry one may
tion, or deliberate imparting of value judgments leading be left wondering why poetic language is so often re-
to explicit agreement or disagreement. Self-expression, ferred to as "creative," and its product as "poetic crea-
suggestion, and communication of value judgments are tion." What is created? If the reader's feelings are stirred
all "emotive uses of language," but each in a different up, and he is led to take various attitudes toward life,
way; and the interesting question of their involvements what is created, in a strict sense? The feelings? They
with each other are obscured by lumping all these uses are only stimulated, as they are by ordinary social com-
together in simple contrast to the scientific use, the munication. The facts of life? They are talked about, not
literal statement of facts (or supposed facts). Even if a made; they were there before. T o call such suggestion
speaker or writer says "Of course, this is a simplifica- and commentary "creation" sounds a bit pretentious,
tion," he is likely to stick to the simplified version of like referring to all works of art as "masterpieces."
semantic problems himself, and take for granted that Before we try to answer the major question I have just
other possible uses of language are subsidiary to one or put before you—"What is created in poetry?"—it
the other of his two kinds. might be helpful to consider the nature of artistic crea-
An important illustration of this danger is the effect tion in general, in other arts.
which the popularized simplified semantic doctrine has In a painting, the essential creation is the appearance
had on the philosophical treatment of poetry even by our of a space, which is not the space wherein the picture
leading scholars. Since language is used in poetry, but hangs and the spectator stands. The wall that supports
literal scientific statement is clearly not its intended use, the painting is not in the painting; it is not part of the
142 H3
picture space. The spectator is not in the picture space, the work of art, somehow results from the way he uses
that space which is the painter's creation is really new. them.
The paints and the canvas, the materials of his work, He seems to use them much as he would in writing
were in the studio before, and have simply been moved a letter or speaking, to make statements, ask questions,
about by his efforts. But the space we see as a result of or register his reactions to things by exclaiming over
that new development was not there before. It is a them. A poem is usually in the form of a discourse about
created apparition. something, just like a conversation or a report, and ex-
All created factors in a work of art are elements of it. hibits all the familiar structures we call "sentences" of
Its elements are what we discover when, casually or various kinds. So, first of all, the poet seems to be saying
carefully, we analyze it. Background and foreground, things.
high lights, empty air, motion, accent, intensity of color, N o w , it is universally recognized, I think, that what
depth of darkness, objects in relation to each other—all the poet says could also be said in somewhat different
these are elements. Canvas and paints, the actual light words—that is, that his statements could be quite faith-
that falls on the picture, are materials. T h e y are used, fully repeated in paraphrase—but that the poetic com-
not created. position would almost certainly be lost in such a retelling.
Music, like painting, is a purely created form not of A person making a poem evidently uses words not only
space, but of time; its materials are tones of varying to say things, but to say them in certain ways. And
pitch, loudness, and quality, but its elements are tonal speculation has run high, for decades if not centuries,
forms, moving, mingling, resolving, having direction as to the parts played by the sound and sense of the
and energy, violently active or abating toward complete words, the images they convey, the feelings they evoke.
rest. Its time, as well as all the great and small tonal Meter and rhyme are certainly products of their sound,
forms (melodies, progressions) that make it up, are that have functioned traditionally in poetry. Imagery
appearances made of sound; music is time made audible is a natural by-product of their sense. The total result
and articulated as a perceptible, dynamic form. Every is much more than a literal statement; it is a statement
art, indeed, creates a special sort of appearance, in terms that makes the stated fact appear in a special light.
of which all its works are made. Everyone knows that the w a y an idea is expressed
So much, then, for the meaning of "creation" in art may serve to recommend it to'people or to make it
generally. N o w let us return to the question of poetry. seem horrible. The selfsame fact wears two very dif-
What does a poet create? Poetry is made of words; but ferent faces in the American and the Soviet press, re-
words are the poet's heritage, and not something he spectively. It all depends on the way it is put. This
creates. They are materials which he uses. The poem, obvious power of words to give the content of discourse
'44 '4S
almost any desired appearance is exploited today both by namely, to the conclusion that the poet, like the orator
political and commercial interests; it is the essence of or advertiser, is lending that created appearance to things
propaganda and of advertising; both build on the fact in the actual world, about which he is talking to us. The
that people will respond to a statement with enthusiasm, entire problem of how and what a poet communicates
anger, indifference, or other emotion, according to the to his reader seems to me a specious one, arising from
way it is worded. the commonsense assumptions that if he writes declara-
In view of our preoccupation, in the present phase tive sentences he must be making statements, and pari
of history, with such emotional responses, it is perhaps passu, if he writes interrogative ones he must be asking
inevitable that literary theorists should regard poetry, questions, and if we are his readers he must be address-
too, as an appeal to the reader's emotions, to enlist his ing them to us. These assumptions, though made by
sympathy for the poet's feeling about the world, the common sense, are wrong, and prevent us from treating
emptiness of life, the ugliness of war, the absurdity of poetry in the same way as all the other arts.
everything, or whatever the poem presents. Poetry is Under the aegis of scientific method, social science,
quite generally regarded as a communication, not of and popular semantics, we have missed a trick, I think,
facts, but of the values the poet puts upon facts which, in the philosophy of language. Most of our interest in
simply as facts, are probably as well known to us as to language has been prompted by needs and problems of
him: the facts of living and dying, loving and loathing, communication. Consequently communication by words
playing the hypocrite, soldiering, worshipping, having has been the key concept of our studies of language; in
children. The facts he mentions constitute what he says; fact, some semanticists regard language as originally and
the values are given to them by the way he says it. His properly a signaling device, elaborated to an amazing
aim, so we are told, is to make us share his particular degree—even to the point where the code suffers con-
way of experiencing these familiar events and conditions fusions, because its signs figure in too many connections
of the world. at once and become overcharged with meanings, so that
If, now, w e ask again my persistent question: what failure of communication or mixed deliveries result. That
does a poet create? the critics to whom I refer can accounts, they believe, for the fact that most of the time
readily answer: the appearance that is given to the sub- language does not look like the conventional set of
ject matter by his words. And in this I agree with them. signals it is supposed to be.
What any artist—poet, painter, dancer, musician or The use of language for poetic creation has received
what not—creates, is always an appearance. The ap- no more than honorable mention in our schools; usually
pearance created in poetry is effected by the way words it is simply lumped with one or all of the familiar
are handled. But beyond this I cannot go with them, emotive functions. The reason is, I think, that we are
146 '47
so dominated by interest in communication, and the T h e general problem of expressive form, which I
poetic use of words is not essentially communicative. believe is the central problem of aesthetics, is not our
Language is the material of poetry, but what is done subject today; but we cannot evade it entirely, since we
with this material is not what we do with language in are dealing with one of its special cases, the creation of
actual life; for poetry is not a kind of discourse at all. a sheer appearance, or virtual event, by means of words.
What the poet creates out of words is an appearance This is a use of words quite distinct from their usually
of events, persons, emotional reactions, experiences, recognized uses; it may be called the formulative function
places, conditions of life; these created things are the of language, which has its own primitive and advanced,
elements of poetry; they constitute what Cecil Day unconscious and conscious levels. It is normally coinci-
Lewis has called "the poetic image." A poem is, in dent with the communicative functions, but largely
precisely his sense, an image. This image is not neces- independent of them; and while its most spectacular
sarily visual; since the word "image" has an almost ir- exhibition is in poetry, it is profoundly, though not
resistible connotation of visualness, I prefer to call the obviously, operative in our whole language-bound men-
poetic image a semblance. The created poetic semblance tal life. In autistic speech it is the paramount purpose.
need not be a semblance of corresponding actual things, Communication is less likely to stimulate it than to set
facts, persons, or experiences. It is quite normally a pure its limits, and hold spontaneous ways of shaping ex-
appearance, a sheer figment; it is essentially a virtual perience to something like a standard pattern. In this
object; and such a virtual object is a work of art. It is way, it is the communicative office of language that
entirely created. Its material is language, its motif, or makes the actual world's appearance public, and reason-
model, usually discursive speech, but what is created ably fixed. The formulative power of words is the
is not actual discourse—what is created is a composed source and support of our imagination; before there can
and shaped apparition of a new human experience. be more than animal communication, there has to be
The composed apparition has as definite a structure envisagement, and a means of developing perception in
as a musical composition, a piece of sculpture, an archi- keeping with conception. Beings who have speech almost
tectural work, or a painting. It is not a report or com- certainly have quite a different sort of direct experience
ment, but a constructed form; if it is a good poetic work of the world from creatures that use only self-expressive
it is an expressive form in the same way that a work of or directive signs.
plastic art is an expressive form—by virtue of the ten- The greatness of the gulf between speechless and
sions and resolutions, balances and asymmetries among speech-molded life has been contemplated and stressed
its own elements, which beget the illusion of organic particularly by the philosophers who trace their in-
nature that artists call "living form." tellectual descent from Kant, and accept, howbeit with
148
*49
various reservations, the Hegelian concept of "Geist"— semantics. Poetry exhibits, like nothing else in the world,
that is, the concept of the human mind as a creative the formulative use of language; it is the paradigm of
entity not belonging to physical nature but to a different creative speech. For the poetic use of language is es-
order of reality. Their metaphysical assumptions, how- sentially formulative. Poetry is not a beautified discourse,
ever, are not necessary to every theory of mind that a particularly effective way of telling things, although
would recognize the role of conception in perception, poetic structures may occur in discourse with truly
memory, and feeling, and the role of language in con- artistic effect. Poetry as such is not discourse at all, it is
ception. There are historical and psychological reasons the creation of a perceptible human experience which,
why all non-idealistic philosophers have either missed from the standpoint of science and practical life, is
or deliberately slighted the problem of verbal imagina- illusory. It may create an apparition reminiscent of
tion, even to the point of side-stepping the whole phe- actual events and places, like a historical or locally
nomenon. But the involvements of language with all the oriented novel, or it may be a free invention of places,
rest of human mentality are really as amenable to events, actions, and persons; but such different com-
naturalistic treatment as to an idealistic approach. positions are not different kinds of art. All poetry is
pure poetry, though it be only more or less successful;
For the philosophical understanding of poetry and its
it is primarily and not incidentally creative. In poetic
relation to art in general, the current positivistic credo
composition one may see the formulative use of language
of "general semantics" is simply inadequate; a more
deliberately and consciously pursued and the result
intimate study of the functions of language is required
spectacularly isolated. W e are far more likely to learn
than their customary divisions into propositional uses
the poetical function of words by studying poetry, and
(sub-divided into various modes) and emotional uses
recognize it subsequently in more obscure contexts,
(with sub-divisions casually suggested). The greatest
such as dream psychology or history of language, than
work to date that has been done on the subject has come
we are to find it in those contexts first and build a theory
from another quarter, and may be found in Ernst
that can be made to fit poetry too.
Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms; but there
are scattered, more recent sources, chiefly in the fields The assumption that the poetic use of language is
of anthropology, linguistics, and poetics, for instance essentially formulative, and per se not communicative,
WhorfFs studies of the Hopi language, from which only has some interesting consequences. The most important
the most superficial and obvious conclusions have yet is that, if propositions are not poetic elements, but ma-
been drawn. terials out of which the elements of a poem are fashioned,
More promising, however, than the semantical ap- then poetry may be regarded and treated as an art in
exactly the same way as painting or music: as the crea-
proach to poetry is the approach from poetry to
ISO
tion of a self-contained, pure appearance, a perceptible slow. There is not even a visual image; for the clouds
expressive form. Such a conception of poetry frees us cannot be taken as clouds casting shadows. They are
from the embarrassment of having to consider under his immaterial visions and their images. Clouds against
different rubrics what, on the one hand, the poet is the night sky cast no outlined shadows; the figure is
saying—that is, the sense and truth-value of his state- not a simple metaphor—it is poetically natural but not
ments—and on the other hand the skill with which he borrowed from nature. It contains a factual distortion,
says it; and of always having to strike a nice balance much like spatial distortion in paintings. What it creates
between those two interests. Poetic statements are no is a moment of intense awareness of many feelings,
more actual statements than the peaches visible in a still paradoxical yet confluent. That moment would be great
life are actual dessert. The real question is what the poet and important to the reader even if he did not know that
makes, and that, of course, depends on how he goes Keats actually died young and was probably aware of
about it. The task of poetic criticism, then, is not to his short lease of life. It is not by sympathy with Keats
learn from any and all available records what was the that one is moved, but by the poetic composition, which
poet's philosophy, morality, life history, or psychosis, would be exactly as moving if it were anonymous.
and to find the revelation of his own experiences in his
T o read poetry as a psychological document, in a
words; it is to evaluate his fiction, the appearance of
context of the author's life, putting in further meanings
thought and feeling or outward events that he creates.
and personal allusions from circumstantial knowledge,
A poem that rises to great heights does so by virtue is to do violence to the poem. That is forcibly making
of the way it is built up—built out of words, but not statements out of its lines, and expanding their meaning
therefore just a pattern of words. Consider Keats's far beyond anything that serves the poetic figment. The
sonnet, "When I have fears that I may cease to be"; result is sometimes fatal to the poem, making it sound
it certainly reaches a poetic peak in the lines: false or silly, as Ash Wednesday did to Edmund Wilson,
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, when he wrote: " I am made a little tired at hearing
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, Eliot, only in his early forties, present himself as an
And think that I may never live to trace 'aged eagle' who asks why he should make the effort
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance to stretch his wings."
This rise, however, is not due to any burst of self-ex- The reaction shows, I think, the banefulness of the
pression, nor reference to persons or events in Keats's common assumption that a poem becomes more signifi-
life; it is due to a sudden concentrated appearance of cant to the reader if he can read it in a context of the
knowledge and mystery, vastness and transience, ef- author's reconstructed life, and picture to himself the
fected by rather few words, sonorous and rhythmically conditions under which the poem was written. All such
1J2 *53
P R O B L E M S OF ART POETIC CREATION
supplements are really destructive of a composition. They heroes and places whose names are woven into it, and
have no creative function whatever, and clutter the work uncovering their biographies. All they need to do for
with inorganic added stuff. Where a reference to some us is to sound Welsh and fill a cherished land with
place or person serves an artistic purpose the poet is, historic graves. For the Wales in the poem is a creation,
after all, free to put it in, perhaps in the title, perhaps constituted exactly as the poet presents it, and having
directly in the work: "Composed on Westminister no political, economic, or other aspects, to tie it up with
Bridge," or: British elections or American tourist agencies.
When it's yesterday in Oregon it's one A.M. in Maine, Some odd revaluations of poetic work may result if
one shifts from the traditional question: "What is the
or:
poet telling us, and how does he communicate his ex-
Mock on, mock on, Rousseau, Voltaire! periences?"—to: "What has the poet created, and how
Many a time, however, names do not really relate a did he do it?" Many strange turns, that serve neither to
poem to an actual setting. The use of specific names is communicate ideas nor to express sentiments about the
often just as effective where these denote nothing known world or anything in it, are suddenly seen in an im-
to the reader—like the place names in our translations portant role: they are constructing the "poetic image"
of Chinese poetry—as where they refer to known places itself, the poem as a virtual experience, which is neither
and persons, like Grantchester, Dublin, Bonaparte, the poet's nor ours, but exists for his and our imaginative
Dante. That depends on the use the poet makes of them. perception. Consider, for instance, a poem we probably
Often his main intent is simply to create the semblance all have read, in school or in one of the famous antholo-
of individual reference, so he chooses proper names gies—Browning's little song from Pippa Passes:
primarily for their sound and only in a general way for
The year's at the spring
their connotation; or his first consideration may be to And day's at the morn;
make the reference specific but strange, so he tosses Morning's at seven;
unfamiliar words about, just making sure they will be The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
taken as proper names: The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
Where the ninth wave flows in Perython, God's in His heaven—
Is the grave of Glwalchmai, the peerless one; All's right with the world!
In Llanbadarn lies Clydno's son.
M y English teacher in High School praised that poem
There would be nothing added to our perception and as a fine expression of Browning's optimism. I thought
understanding of that poem by identifying the Welsh his view of the world was very silly, for a man with a
'S4 155
P R O B L E M S OF ART POETIC CREATION
big beard. Oh, but Browning believed in progress, and he maritime setting and transposed to the countryside, the
believed in God, and the key line to the whole poem loud masculine "aye-aye, sir!" transmuted into a girl's
was "God's in His heaven"! song, the fierce sea images into gentle dewy slopes, that
Teacher explained that the song occurred in a play makes the perfect abstraction of feeling—the readiness,
about two people who had lost all faith, and at the the eagerness of a launching. Not a mention, not a
crucial moment heard Pippa's song outside the window, metaphor of the ship appears; only the same sense of
reassuring them. I thought it might take a little more beginning, launching the young day.
than a young thing's opinion to reassure them. Pippa's The little poem can bear quite persistent study. Every
view of life seemed even less important than Browning's. symbol is right, every bone of its structure covered.
And even if that utterance made sense in a play, why was That is composition. And in this composition the final
the poem in the Oxford Book and everywhere else? I idea that is stated loses its philosophical weight: the
hated it. whole image is only of the day. There is no optimistic
Many years later I read it in its context, in the dra- belief expressed at all.
matic poem, Pippa Passes. It comes like a sudden distant If we look at poetry as a created form, we find in
call. It turns the action. And the key line is, "God's in every successful poem some unfamiliar devices, and
His heaven"! Then I looked at it poetically, to see what have to beware of looking for the traditional ones before
made it feel the way it did. we are quite sure of what is in the works. A n eminent
An odd structure: each short line a complete state- critic has taken Swinburne to task for failing to develop
ment, and in the first three lines the same colloquial turn his images even to the point of letting the reader grasp
of phrase, shifted from one colorless assertion to another them before they pass. The poem that elicited this
until, in the third occurrence, it sounds artificial; then, censure was the first chorus from Atlanta in Calydon.
the first image. The pattern of the verses is insistently All its rich imagery, the critic claimed, is lost because the
schematic: three lines saying something is "at" some- liquid flow of the words fairly drives one to read fast,
thing, then a statement of condition; three more lines and causes each image to pass before it is really formed,
saying something is " o n " or "in" something, and another and to be crowded out by another that meets the same
statement of condition, this time entirely general, uni- fate. And surely he is right; the lines fairly race, if you
versal. What does it sound like?—A roll call for "all speak them in the most natural, unrhetorical way:
aboard." This man is here, that man is there—one at this, When the hounds of springs are on winter's traces,
one at that—the side is clear; each on his post, the cap- The mother of months in meadow or plain
tain up there in his place—she's trim! Fills the shadows and windy places
It is this structure of the roll call, taken from its normal With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
t6
5
And the brown bright nightingale amorous develop as sensuous experiences. But is a picture of spring
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
the essential creation, the expressive form itself, or do
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain. his references to grass and flowers and rain and birdsong
serve a different semblance? What is the motif?
Come, with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, The poem does not create a sensuous image, but a
Maiden most perfect, lady of light, dynamic one—a vision of the emotional drive sometimes
With a noise of winds and many rivers, called "Spring Fever." That drive is from within; what
With a clamor of waters, and with might; elicits it is the totality of things, their separate qualities
Bind on thy sandals, Ο thou most fleet,
are irrelevant. Swinburne's intent, therefore, is to crowd
Over the splendor and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, and pile impressions so they blur each other, and to drive
Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night. ideas with ideas, each emotionally toned, even quite
highly strung, but none a fixed object of any emotion.
Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, The result is an unearthly excitement, not distilled from
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling? the poetic image of spring, but absorbing all the images
Ο that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,
into itself.
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her Statement, allusion, imagery, grammatical form, word
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; rhythm, and any other elements in a poem all have
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, essentially and purely creative functions. Even obscurity,
And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing. which always goads critics into paraphrasing the problem
atical lines, is a poetic element; sometimes the reader is not
For winter's rains and ruins are over,
supposed to find a line clear, any more than he is sup
And all the season of snows and sins;
The day's dividing lover and lover, posed to see an outline of the forms of chiaroscuro
The light that loses, the night that wins; painting. Something is created by the difficulty of dic
And time remembered is grief forgotten, tion, the sense of incomprehensibility. Sometimes co
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, herence of ideas is not needed; then it is left out. There
And in green underwood and cover is coherence of another sort, as in De la Mare's Peacock
Blossom by blossom, the spring begins.
Pie—coherence of form or mood. Confession of feeling
If it was the poet's intention to describe the events or opinion, made in the first person, is no more discourse
in nature that constitute the coming of spring, make us than a self-portrait is the painter. Real confession would
realize them in imagination and share his way of seeing belong to another order. Poetry generates its own entire
each one, then certainly they pass too swiftly, and never world, as painting generates its entire continuum of
St8 '59
P R O B L E M S OF ART
space. The relation of poetry to the world of facts is the

same as that of painting to the world of objects: actual
events, if they enter its orbit at all, are motifs of poetry,
as actual objects are motifs of painting. N o matter how
faithful the image, it is a pure image, unmixed with bits
of actuality. It is a created appearance, an expressive APPENDIX
form, and there is properly nothing in it that does not
enhance its symbolic expression of vitality, emotion, and
consciousness. Poetry, like all art, is abstract and mean-
ingful; it is organic and rhythmic, like music, and
imaginal, like painting. It springs from the power of
language to formulate the appearance of reality, a
power fundamentally different from the communicative
function, however involved with it in the evolution of
speech. The pure product of the formulative use of
language is verbal creation, composition, art; not state-
ment, but poesis.
160
ABSTRACTION IN SCIENCE AND
ABSTRACTION IN ART
(Reprinted from Structure, Method and Meaning:

Essays in Honor of Henry M. Sheffer, by permission of
The Liberal Arts Press, Inc.)
AXL genuine art is abstract. The schematized shapes

usually called "abstractions" in painting and sculpture
present a very striking technical device for achieving
artistic abstraction, but the result is neither more nor
less abstract than any successful work in the "great
tradition," or for that matter in Egyptian, Peruvian, or
Chinese art—that is, in any tradition whatever.
Yet the abstractness of a work of art seems to be
something quite different from that of science, mathe-
matics, or logic. This difference lies not in the meaning
of "abstraction," as offhand one might suppose; we are
not dealing with a mere ambiguity. Both in art and in
logic (which carries scientific abstraction to its highest
development), "abstraction" is the recognition of a rela-
tional structure, or form, apart from the specific thing
(or event, fact, image, etc.) in which it is exemplified.
The difference lies in the way the recognition is achieved
163
APPENDIX
in art and science, respectively; for abstraction is nor- the word has undergone refinements, toe, in plastic art,
mally performed for some intellectual purpose, and its
it does not mean that at all. The forms achieved by prose
purpose differs radically from the one context to the
fiction are neither shapes nor logical systems; for al-
other. The two characteristic processes of abstracting
though literary works contain propositions, literary form
a form from its concrete embodiment or exemplifica-
is not the systematic unity of a complex literal state-
tion go back, therefore, as far as the fundamental dis-
ment. The artistic form is a perceptual unity of some-
tinction between art and science itself; and that is a long
thing seen, heard, or imagined—that is, the configuration,
way back.
or Gestalt, of an experience. One may say that to call
There seem, indeed, to be two meanings of the word
such an immediately perceived Gestalt "form" is merely
"form" involved in the two fields, respectively. A logi-
a metaphor; but it would be exactly as reasonable to say
cian, mathematician, or careful epistemologist may ques-
that the use of the word for syntactical structures is
tion what sense it makes to call anything "form" except
metaphorical, derived from geometry, and carried over
the logical form of discourse, the structure of proposi-
into algebra, logic, and even grammar.
tions expressed either in ordinary language or in the
refined symbolism of the rational sciences. Wherever If one cannot tell which of the two meanings is literal
terms exist at all for him they can be named; the rela- and which is figurative, it is fairly safe to assume that
tions among them can be named (although their "names" both make use of a single underlying principle which
may be indirect, may be parentheses or even mere posi- is exemplified in two different modes. The basic prin-
tions in a line of print); and no matter how complex ciple of "form" determines that close relation between
their combinations may be, those terms and relations apperceptive unity and logical distinctions which was
are wholly expressible in verbal or algorithmic proposi- known to the ancients as "unity in diversity." But they
tions. Why, then, call anything "form" that is not capa- might just as well have called it "diversity in unity"; for
ble of such presentation? it is sometimes thought to relate many individually con-
Yet artists do speak of "form" and know what they ceived things or properties each to each, directly or
mean; and, moreover, their meaning is closer than that indirectly, producing a whole, and sometimes to dis-
of the logicians to what the word originally meant, tinguish many elements from one another where an all-
namely, "visible and tangible shape." The artists, there- inclusive unit is the first assumption. The preposition
fore, may ask in their turn how one can speak of the "in" is an unfortunate word to designate the construction
"form" of something invisible and intangible—for in- of a coherent system out of given factors; but when it
stance, the series of natural numbers, or an elaborate serves also to designate the articulation of structural ele-
mathematical expression equal to zero. Their sense of ments of a given whole, it is as bad a hyperbole for the
164 i65
PROBLEMS OF ART APPENDIX
expression of relational concepts as ever bedeviled discursive form "systematic," and also why discursive
classical philosophy. symbolism is appropriate to science and artistic symbol
Yet the two ideas—constructed unity and organic ism to the conception and expression of vital experience,
differentiation of an original whole—both involve the or what is commonly termed "the life of feeling."
more general concept of relative distinctness. T h e y are As art and discursive reason differ in their starting
specifications of this concept that arise from epistemo- points of logical intuition, so they differ in all their intel
logical sources, from the nature of logical intuition and lectual processes. This makes the problem of abstraction
the nature of the symbols whereby we elicit and pro appear entirely different in the two domains. Yet artists
mote it. N o w the object of logical intuition is form; and and logicians are equally concerned with abstraction, or
although there are two ways of developing our per the recognition of pure form, which is necessary to any
ception of this object, and consequently two sets of asso understanding of relationships; and they perform it with
ciations with the word "form," the use of it is equally equal spontaneity and carry it, perhaps, to equally great
and similarly justified in both contexts. lengths of skillful manipulation.
There are certain relational factors in experience which There is a widespread belief—sometimes regarded as
are either intuitively recognized or not at all, for example, a very truism—that abstract thought is essentially arti
distinctness, similarity, congruence, relevance. These are ficial and difficult, and that all untutored or "natural"
formal characteristics which are protological in that they thought is bound to concrete experiences, in fact to
"must be seen to be appreciated." One cannot take them physical things. But if abstraction were really unnatural,
on faith. The recognition of them is what I mean by no one could have invented it. If the untutored mind
"logical intuition." All discourse is a device for con could not perform it, how did we ever learn it? W e can
catenating intuitions, getting from one to another, and develop by training only what is incipiently given by
building up the greater intuitive apperception of a total nature. Somewhere in man's primitive repertoire there
Gestalt, or ideal whole. must have been a spontaneous intellectual practice from
Artistic intuition is a similar protological experience, which the cultivated variety of abstract thought took its
but its normal progress is different. It begins with the rise. 1
perception of a total Gestalt and proceeds to distinctions This instinctive mental activity is the process of
of ideal elements within it. Therefore its symbolism is symbol-making, of which the most amazing result is
a physical or imaginal whole whereof the details are language. All symbolization rests on a recognition of
articulated, rather, than a vocabulary of symbols that congruent forms, from the simple one-to-one corre-
may be combined to present a coherent structure. That 1
This fact was noted by T. Ribot in an article, "Abstraction Prioi
is w h y artistic form is properly called "organic" and to Speech," in The Open Court (1809), Vol. XIII, pp. 14-20.
166 16η
P R O B L E M S OF ART APPENDIX
spondence of name and thing that is the dream of speech media of art; some remain essentially linguistic and
reformers to the most sophisticated projection of thought
2
simply transform and develop language in their natural
into conventional systems of notation. The logic of advance, giving it more and more of what we call "literal
symbolic expression is an old story though not com meaning," more and more precise grammar, and finally
pletely told even yet; it is still gaining precision in works the algorithmic extensions that belong rather to written
like C. I. Lewis' Analysis of Knowledge and Val language than to speech.
uation. But its main outlines are familiar enough to need W e have no record of any really archaic tongue; the
no restatement here. The interesting thing in the present origins of all known languages lie beyond the reaches of
context is that the growth of language takes place at all history. But as far back as we can go, language has two
times in several dimensions, and each of these entails a essential functions, which may be called, somewhat
primitive and spontaneous form of abstractive thinking. broadly, "connotation" and "denotation" (the exact dis
The appreciation of pure conceptual forms as such is tinctions made by Professor Lewis are indeed relevant
4
indeed a late and difficult attainment of civilized thought, here), but I resort to the less precise, traditional terms
but the abstraction of formal elements for other in because, in the small compass of this essay, the roughest
tellectual purposes is a natural and even an irrepressible characterization that will serve the purpose is the most
human activity. It permeates all thought and imagination economical). Connotation belongs to all symbols; it is
—reason, free association, play, delirium, and dream. the symbolic function that corresponds to the psycho
And although I am convinced that some abstractions logical act of conception. Denotation accrues to symbols
cannot be made verbally at all, but can be made by the in practical use, for the applicability of concepts to
non-discursive forms we call "works of art," yet the 8
"reality" is, after all, their constant pragmatic measure.
basic abstractive processes are all exemplified in language Both conception and denotation through language are
at various stages of its ever-productive career. Some natural activities, instinctive, popular, and therefore
transcend its limitations soon, and others late; some leave freely improvisational and elaborative; and both involve
it and become completely articulate only in the various a constant practice of abstraction from the pure experi
2
Cf. Bertrand Russell's Philosophy (New York, 1927), Ch. IV; ence of this, here-and-now.
and his later and more elaborate Inquiry into Meaning and Truth The principles of abstraction that govern the making
(New York, 1940), especially the first four chapters; also G. B.
Shaw's Preface to R. A. Wilson's The Miraculous Birth of Language of symbolic expressions vary, however, with the pur
(New York, 1948). poses (conscious or unconscious) to which those ex
•Here I regret to disagree radically with Professor Lewis, who pressions are to be put. One outstanding purpose is,
says: "It is doubtful that there are, or could be, meanings which
it is intrinsically impossible for words to express."—An Analysis of certainly, to attain generality in thought. The tremen-
Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, 111., 1946), p. 73. *IHd., Ch. ΙΠ.
168 lop
P R O B L E M S OF ART APPENDIX
dous practical value of language lies largely in its power blavus, a Middle Latin form of flaws, meaning, not
of generalization, whereby the naming of any object im "blue," but "yellow." Black is descended from bhleg,
8
mediately establishes the class of such objects. This is a and cognate with blanc, blank, Swedish black, Norwegian
very rudimentary abstractive function inherent in lan blakk, meaning "white." T h e oldest sense is probably
guage as such, as Ribot observed more than fifty years preserved in "bleak." But what is even more surprising
ago, and as Cassirer has demonstrated in The Philosophy
0
is that the connotation of an adjective often shifts
of Symbolic Forms. The earliest class-concepts, there
a
entirely from one sensory field to another. T h e German
fore, are directly linked with the assignment of names to word hell, now applied literally only to light and color—
objects. that is, to visual impressions—and sometimes used meta
The modern empiricists, notably Locke, took it for phorically of tones, seems originally to have referred to
granted that the "simple qualities"—such as colors, tones, sounds first and foremost, and to have come into use for
smells and tastes, pressures—were the items most directly visual effects only around the time of Martin Luther. In
presented to the mind through primitive, unguided sense fact, when Luther employs it to describe light, he always
experience, and therefore remembered—that is, con says "hell licht" "am hellen lichten Tag" and the old
ceived—even as meaningless "data." Oddly enough, the meaning is still preserved in the idiom "ein heller
development of language, which mirrors the history of Haufe" which refers not to a bright throng but a noisy
those twin functions, perception and conception, gives one.
a different view of elementary qualities. Judging by Yet the apparently capricious changes of meaning,
early nomenclature, we find that colors, for instance, often from the original quality to its very opposite,
were not always distinguished by their actual spectrum follow a perfectly obvious principle: a word designates
values—that is, as "red," "blue," "yellow," and so forth any quality that can symbolize a certain feeling. This
—but primarily as warm or cold, clear or dull. Walde's seems to be the law of that metaphorical extension
comparative etymological dictionary renders the mean
7
whereby whole groups of words arise out of one
ing of the Indo-European root £hel as "glanzen, schim- phonetic "root," all embodying this root in their sound
mern, gelb, grim, grau oder blau." The names for definite and deriving their meaning from its archaic sense, which
pigments were late established, and often changed their Max Miiller aptly called the "root metaphor." The
signification completely from one hue to another. Thus original reference of adjectives especially appears to have
the current word "blue," German blau, derives from been primarily to feeling tones, and hence, quite freely
5
In the essay previously alluded to. and naturally, to any sense-qualities that helped the con
• S e e especially Vol. I, Chs. IV and V. ception of them. Therefore extreme opposites of sensa-
T
Walde, Vergleichendes Worterbuch der indogemumischen
Sprachm (Leipzig, 1926). *lbid.
ιηι
APPENDIX
tion were often designated by the same word: white and discovery that there are two different "extremes"; and
black, hot and cold, high and deep (Latin altus). Both
9 their close association, amounting even to fusion in a
extremes of a sensation symbolize the same intensity of single root-metaphor, would lead to a new, powerful,
feeling. The true opposite of their value is a low-keyed abstracted notion—the notion of a dimension, a range
sensation—dim, gray; lukewarm; flat, shallow. Primitive or gamut of experiences. Then the qualities within one
thought is fairly indifferent to the particular order of dimension could be distinguished, named, comparatively
sensation from which the qualitative symbol is taken, treated; the principles of empirical analysis supervene
so long as it conveys the subjective value of the experi- over the earlier recognition of feeling-tones; and lan-
ence to be recorded. guage become the mighty instrument of discursive
thought in which Aristotle found the laws of logic re-
But language is not only an intellectual tool whereby
flected.
concepts are formed; it is also a common currency for
The "simple qualities" of empiricism, the "data" that
the exchange of them; and this public interest puts a
are obviously distinct for us, are so by virtue of language;
premium on objective reference and develops the func-
and their classification in sensory orders—such as hues,
tion of denotation. The attachment of verbal labels to
sounds, tastes, and so on—is already a long step toward
things is the major purpose of words in social use. Every
science. This step is effected by the spontaneous proc-
device that facilitates naming is naturally accepted and
esses of symbolic transformation that give rise to lan-
exploited; and perhaps the greatest of such devices is
guage in the first place: metaphor, which always involves
generalization, the treatment of every actually given
a basic recognition of the common form that justifies
thing as a representative of its kind—that is, of every
the substitution of one image for another; and the prin-
"this" as a "such-as-this." The establishment of kinds,
ciple of pars pro toto, exemplifying the class-concept
or classes of things, requires some easily recognizable
involved. But these primitive insights into formal condi-
mark of membership in otherwise diverse objects, and
tions do not constitute "abstraction" in a strict sense.
this interest was probably what led people from the
T h e y are abstractive processes implicit in symbol-mak-
conception of qualities through feeling-tones to the
ing and symbol-using, rather than a recognition of ab-
more precise observation of publicly comparable fea-
stracted elements as such. Genuine abstraction is a rela-
tures—the hues, shapes, sizes, noises, temperatures, and
tively late achievement, born of reflection on the works
the rest that modern languages honor with adjectives:
of art and science, and fully understood only by means
blue, round, big, loud, cold, and so forth. With this
of the latter. But once we attain the concept of abstract
fixation of characters, the old contrast between "ex-
form, or pur^ structure apart from the things in which
treme" and "middling" would be broken down by the
it is exemplified, we find that both art and science con-
"Walde gives the meanings of the root kel as: " ( i ) frieren, kalt. (2) stantly tend toward the maximum revelation of abstract
warm."
172 m
elements, and both for the same purpose—namely, to of language—and to make general statements about
create more and more powerful symbols—but by dif reality—that is, assert general facts of nature.
ferent procedures, born of their different intuitive start It was only with the development of mathematics that
ing points. abstract logical forms became so apparent and, in their
The driving principle of science is generalization. Its appearance, so interesting that some logicians turned their
subject matter is really something perfectly concrete— attention to the study of form as such and undertook
namely, the physical world; its aim is to make statements the abstraction of relational patterns from any and every
of utmost generality about the world. And generaliza concrete exemplification. Russell, despite his proposal to
tion, as we have just seen, arises from the denotative dispense with abstractions, was one of the first advocates
character of language, from the fact that a named thing of that new logic and (together with Whitehead) one
is at once a focus of "reality"—that is, a fixed entity— of its great promoters; for, oddly enough, systematic
and a symbol for its kind; since a name is always a class generalization—the principle that was to obviate the
label as well as a handle for its specific object. (Even need of abstraction—furnished exactly the technique
supposedly individual, or proper, names tend to serve in whereby structures were brought to light, symbolically
this double capacity: "A Daniel come to judgment!") expressed and recognized as pure abstract forms. Russell's
The principle of classification, inherent in language, be leanings toward physical science are so strong that per
gets the logic of quantified statement that underlies the haps he does not see the entire potential range of philo
sophical studies built on the study of relational logic.
development of scientific thought. There was good
Whitehead came nearer to it; Peirce and Royce saw i t ; 11
reason why a logic guided by scientific aims should have

but the actual development of systematic abstraction to
been developed in extension rather than intension; the
the point where it can be an eye-opener to philosophers
extension of a term is the range of its denotation, and
has been the special task of the man to whom these essays
denotation is its link with the world, the object of science.
are dedicated. In natural science, generalization is all we
Bertrand Russell, in one of his brilliant early essays, called
require, and mathematics is valued for its power of
this extensionalism "the Principle of Abstraction . . .
general statement and complex manipulations without
which might equally well be called the principle that
any loss of generality. But in pure mathematics the ele
dispenses with abstraction." Actually, it does not dis
10
ment of logical form is so commandingly evident that

pense with them at all, but moves over them without
mathematical studies naturally lead to a theory of struc
explicit recognition, because its aim is to put all ab
ture as such and to a systematic study of abstraction.
stracted forms to further use—much as we do in making
our unconscious abstractions by the common-sense use 11
C . S. Peirce, "The Architecture of Ideas," in Chance, Love and
Logic; Josiah Royce, "The Principles of Logic," especially Sec. Ill,
10
Oar Knowledge of the External World, 2nd ed. (New York, in Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, edited by Windelband
1929), p. 44. and Ruge, Eng. transl. ( 1 9 1 } ) .
ΙΊ4.
P R O B L E M S OF ART APPENDS
That study is logic, and its technique is progressive gen- forms abstracted in art are not those of rational discourse,
eralization. The use of generalization to make abstract which serve us to symbolize public "fact," but complex
structure apparent was more or less accidental until forms capable of symbolizing the dynamics of subjective
Sheffer saw its possibilities and built a pure logic of experience, the pattern of vitality, sentience, feeling, and
forms upon it. This work gave logic a different aim, not emotion. Such forms cannot be revealed by means of
only from the old traditional "art and science of infer- progressive generalization; this makes the whole develop-
ence," but even from the modern development of truth- ment of art and all its techniques radically different from
value systems; for instead of being essentially a scientific those of discursive thought. Although art and science
tool, logic thus becomes an extension of human interest spring from the same root, namely, the impulse to sym-
beyond the generalized empirical thought of science, to bolic expression—of which the richest, strongest, and
the domain of abstract form, where the very principles undoubtedly oldest manifestation is language—they sepa-
of symbolism, conception, and expression lie open to in- rate practically from the begiruiing. 12
quiry and technical demonstration. A work of art is and remains specific. It is "this," and
If we now turn to the domain of the arts, it seems as not "this kind"; unique instead of exemplary. A physical
though nothing comparable to logical abstractness could copy of it belongs to the class of its copies, but the
be found there at all, but everything were immediate, original is not itself a member of this class to which it
unintellectual, and concrete. Yet a little conversance furnishes the class concept. W e may, of course, classify
with any art quickly reveals its abstract character. A it in numberless ways, for example, according to its
work of art is a symbol; and the artist's task is, from theme, from which it may take its name—"Madonna
beginning to end, the making of the symbol. And symbol- and Child," "Last Supper," and so on. And as many
making requires abstraction, the more so where the sym- artists as wish may use the same theme, or one artist may
bolic function is not conventionally assigned, but the use it many times; there may be many "Raphael Madon-
presented form is significant simply by virtue of its nas" and many "Last Suppers" in the Louvre. But such
articulate character. The meanings of a work of art have class-membership has nothing to do with the artistic im-
to be imaginatively grasped through the forms it presents portance of a work (the classification of a scientific
to the sense or senses to which it is addressed; and, to do object, on the other hand, always affects its scientific
this, the work must make a forceful abstraction of importance).
"significant form" from the concrete stuff that is its The artist's problem, then, is to treat a specific object
medium. abstractly; to make it clearly an instance of a form, with-
But the abstractive process of art is entirely different 11
For a full discussion of this point, see E. Cassirer, The Philosophy
from that of science, mathematics, and logic; just as the of Symbolic Forms, especially Vol. I, ch. I.
176 '77
out resorting to a class of similar objects from which the the semblance is forcible enough—that is, if the artist-
form underlying their similarity could be abstracted by is successful—the impression of living form becomes
the logical method of progressive generalization. The commanding and the physical status of the piece in-
first step is usually to make the object unimportant from significant. The form of organic process which char-
any other standpoint than that of appearance. Illusion, acterizes all vital function has been abstracted, and the
fiction, all elements of unreality in art serve this purpose. abstraction made directly from one specific phenomenon,
The work has to be uncoupled from all realistic con- without the aid of several examples from which a general
nections and its appearance made self-sufficient in such pattern emerges that may then be symbolically rendered.
a way that one's interest does not tend to go beyond it. In art, the one instance is intelligibly constructed and is
A t the same time, this purely apparent entity is simplified given the character of a symbol by suppression of its
so that the ear, eye, or (in the case of literary art) the actual constitution as painted cloth, vibrating air, or
constructive imagination can take in the whole pattern (somewhat less simply) a string of the conventional
all the time, and every detail be seen in a fundamental, counters called "words," whose relative values are re-
corded in the dictionary. When its proper material status
unfailing context—seen related, not seen and then ration-
is cancelled by the illusion of organic structure, its phe-
ally related. Whether there is much detail or little, what
nomenal character becomes paramount; the specific ob-
there is must seem an articulation of the total semblance.
ject is made to reveal its logical form.
In the case of a piece that is not physically perceivable at
one time, as for instance a novel, a long drama or opera, Yet it does not present an abstracted concept for our
or a series of frescoes constituting a single work, the contemplation; the abstractive process is only an incident
proportion of the whole has to be established at all times in the whole function of a work of art, which is to
by implication, which is a special and technical problem. symbolize subjective experience—that is, to formulate
In any event, the perception of a work of art as "signifi- and convey ideas of sentience and emotion. The ab-
cant form"—significant of the nature of human feeling stracted form of organic relations and vital rhythms is
—always proceeds from the total form to its subordinate only an ingredient in the total expression of feeling, and
features. remains implicit in that greater process. But it is the
This manner of perception, which the work is designed framework; and, once it is established, the whole realm
to elicit, causes it to appear organic; for the evolution of sense-perception furnishes symbolic material. Here
of detail out of an indivisible, self-sufficient whole is the inherent emotive significance of sense-data comes
characteristic of organisms and is the material counter- into play. The natural relationship between sensory qual-
ities and feelings, which governs the extension of lan-
part of their function, life. And so the work of art seems
guage by the development of "root-metaphors," also
to have organic structure and rhythms of life, though it
determines the function of sensuous materials in art.
is patently not a real organism but a lifeless object. If
17* '79
PROBLEMS OF ART
Surfaces, colors, textures and lights and shadows, tones

of every- pitch and quality, vowels and consonants, swift
or heavy motions—all things that exhibit definite qual-
ities—are potential symbols of feeling, and out of these
the illusion of organic structure is made. That is w h y art
is essentially qualitative and at the same time abstract.
INDEX
But the sensuous elements, often spoken of as the "sense-
content" of a work, are not content at all but pure
symbol; and the whole phenomenon is an expanded
metaphor of feeling, invented and recognized by the abstraction, 31-33, 42, 68-69, 93-94) Brownell, Baker, no
same intuition that makes language grow from the "root- 104-05, 163-80 Browning, Robert, 155-57; quoted,
artistic vs. scientific, 163-80 •55
metaphors" of fundamentally emotive significance. in language, 167-73
Artistic abstraction, being incidental to a symbolic Anschauung (Kant), 61 Camerata, 138
apparition, primary, See illusion Cassirer, Ernst, 150, 170, 177 n.
process that aims at the expression and knowledge of Arabesque, 87, 88 Centeno, August, 59
architecture, 86-87 Chase, Stuart, 70
something quite concrete—the facts of^human feeling, Aristotle, 76, no, 115, 116, 117, Chaucer, Geoffrey, 122
which are just as concrete as physical occurrences—does 118, 131, 173 Ching Hao, quoted, 99
Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 117-18; Chopin, Frederic, 87
not furnish elements of genuine abstract thought. The 122 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, quoted,
abstractive processes in art would probably always re- art: 32, 107
aim of, 92, 96 color symphonies, 86
main unconscious if w e did not know from discursive and craft, 90-91, 110-11 comics, 72
logic what abstraction is. They are intuitive, and often cultural importance of, 69-74 conception, 131
defined, 53, 80, 109-11 connotation, 169
most successful and complete in primitive art. It is philosophy of, 1-4 craft, 90-91, no-n
through science that we recognize the existence of pure principles of, 14, 108-23, '37-38 creation, 27-43; term, 3-4; poetic,
art work defined, 15; purpose of, 140-60
form, for here it is slowly achieved by conscious method 8 Cristeller, Paul, 76
and finally becomes an end in itself for the entirely un- arts, the, interrelations among, 9- Croce, Benedetto, 65
10, 14, 41, 75-89 culture, art and, 69-74
empirical discipline of logic. That is probably w h y so
many people stoutly maintain that art is concrete and Bacon, Francis, 70, 140
Barnes, Albert, 92, no, i n dance, 1-12, 84-85, 97, 121, 136
science abstract. What they should properly say—and beauty, 119 Dante, 122
Bell, Clive, 33, 59, 107, 128, 129 daydream, 113
perhaps really mean—is that science is general and art "Bellamy Trial, The," 97 De la Mare, Walter, 159
specific. For science moves from general denotation to Blake, William, quoted, 56-57 denotation, 169
Boston Museum School of Art, 87 Dewey, John, 27, no-n
precise abstraction; art, from precise abstraction to vital Bloom, Leopold, 136 discourse, 8, 21-22, 33, 68, 91,
connotation, without the aid of generality. Brahms, Johannes, 103 124-25, 130, 134, 164, 167, 177
Brancusi, Constantin, 76, 109 drama, 85, 97, 115
180
l8l
INDEX INDEX
Edtnan, Irwin, 72; quoted, no Hobbes, Thomas, 141 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 40, Reid, Louis Arnaud, quoted, 119
Homer, 77, 118 109 representation, 115
effect, 96, 106 Miiller, Max, 171
Eliot, T. S., 87, 136, 153 Horace, 76 Respighi, Ottorino, 97
Muller, Wilhelm, 84 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 109
emotion, See feeling Munro, Thomas, 76
Emperor Jones, The, 109 *Idea" (Flaubert), 30, 69, 107 rhythm, in living organism,
music, 26, 84-85, 86-88, 144 50-52
etymology, 170-71 ideas, 130-31
Ewing, C. Α., 63 and n., 64, 66; Iliad, 117 modern, 40-41 Ribot, T., 167 n., 170
quoted, 63, 64 movement in, 36-41 Robbia, Luca della, 99
illusion, 29-43; primary illusion "painting," 86-87 "root metaphor" (Muller), 171,
expressiveness, 13-26, 59, 119 (apparition), 35-41, 81, 83 principles of, 116 179
image, 131-32; dynamic, 5, 6 transformations in, 102-04 Royce, Josiah, 175
Fantasia, 87
imagination, 70 Russell, Bertrand, 141, 168 n.,
Faure, Elie, 114 imitation, 95-107 Nagel, Ernest, 127; quoted, 130
feeling, 24-26, 30, 34, 71-72, 80, "natural light" (Locke), 65-66, 174. >75ί quoted, 174
import, 127. See also vital import
91-94, 96, 107, 109-10, I I I , 69
112-14, 133, 177
insight, 92, 96 Sachs, Curt, 1 1 , 76 n.
intuition, 60-67, 166 nature and art, 73 Sakuntala, 109
in dance, 7-10 novel, 97-98, 165
rationality and, 124 Sargent, John Singer, 109
James, Henry, 48 Schenker, Heinrich, 115-16
Feeling and Form, 80-81, 126, 127 James, William, 70 painting, 28-29, 86-87, 121-22, 127-
"Felt life" (James), 48, 60, 67 128, 143-44 Schubert, Franz, 84, 102-03
Joyce, James, 109 Schumann, Robert, 88
Flaubert, Gustave, 30, 69, 107 Paradise Lost, 117
form, 15-26 Pater, Walter, quoted, 99-101 science, abstraction in, 32-33,
Kant, Immanuel, 61, 149 163-80; philosophy of, 2-3
discursive, 21-23 Peirce, C. S., 175 and n.
dynamic, 18-19, 34, 47-48, 54-55 Keats, John, quoted, 101, 152; 153 perception, artistic, 59-74 sculpture, 30, 85, 97, 99-100, 121
expressive, 20, 127, 128-29, 134, philosophical question defined, semantics, 150
Lake Poets, 138 semblance, 148
149 language, 8, 21-24, 33,67-68, 70-71, '"3 sense-qualities, 170-72, 179-80
living, 44-58, 128 91-94, 124, 130, 134 Picasso, Pablo, 9 sentience, 45-46
logical, 16-17, 3 ° ' 34 and poetry, 140-60 Pirandello, Luigi, 76 Shakespeare, William, 72, 84
meanings of, 164-66 etymology, 170-71 Plato, no Shaw, George Bernard, 168 n.
organic, 44-45 symbol-making in, 167-73 Play's the Thing, The, 109 Sheffer, Henry M., 125
significant, 33, 59, 127, 128, 129, Lewis, Cecil Day, 135, 148 Poe, Edgar Allan, quoted, 116-17, Simonides, 76, 86
133, 134, 178 Lewis, C. I., 168 and n., 169 and n. 118-19 society, art and, 69-74
Fry, Roger, quoted, 31; 32, 33, Lied, German, 103 poetry, 84, 87, 101-02, 115 Sophocles, 76
128 life, organic process in, 47-53 Arnold on, 117-18 space, virtual, 29, 32, 33, 35-36,
"life" in art, 44-45 creation, 122-23, 140-60 81, 83
Geist (Hegel), 150 literature. See types, e.g., poetry organic structure in, 55-57 subjectivity. See feeling
generalization, 32-33, 174, 180 Locke, John, 65-66, 140, 170; Poe on, 116-17, 118-19 Swinburne, Algernon Charles,
Gestalt, 165, 166 quoted, 65 Praxiteles, 76 101, 157-59; quoted, 157-58
Goethe, J. W. von, 84 logic, 163, 164-68, 174-76 primary illusion (apparition). symbol and symbolization, 20-21,
Luther, Martin, 171 See illusion
Guernica, 135 23-26
primitive art, 95
prose fiction. See novel genuine, 130-32
Hanslick, Eduard, 39 Maori art, 115 Psalms, 109 in art, 25, 60, 68, 73, 166-67,
Hegel, G. W. F , 150 mathematics, 175-76 124-39
Heine, Heinrich, 84 meaning, 127 Rader, Melvin, 127 in ideas, 131, 132
Heracleitos, 18 Mercator projection, 20 Raphael, 78, 177 in language and discourse, 21,
Herrick, Robert, 109 metaphor, 23, 94, 104-07, 171, 173 rationality, feeling and, 124 67-68, 71, 92, 93, 94, 130, 167-
Hindemith, Paul, 9 Michelangelo, 76, 100-01 reality, 93 '73
Hindu dance, 136 Moses, 136 reasoning, 63-66
metaphorical, 23-24
182 18 3
INDEX
Tartuffe, 109 vital import, 59-60
technique, 96-98 vitality, artistic, 44
Thieme, Willem, no .
time, virtual, 37-41, 81, 83 Wagner, Richard, 109
tradition, 114 Wafde, 170, 172 n.
transformation, 98-107 waterfall as dynamic form, 18,
treatment, 96, 106 48-49
Welsh poem, 154
Whitehead, Alfred North, 175
Udine, Jean D', 92 Whorff, 150
Urlinie (Schenker), 116 Wild, Katherine, quoted, 62 and
«., 64
Venus of Milo, 85, 100, 109 Wilson, Edmund, 153
Vinci, Leonardo da, 76 Wilson, R. Α., i68 n.
virtual entity, 5-6, 87. See also
space and time Yeats, William Butler, 136
184
Published by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK
PROBLEMS OF ART
This book is an introduction to Susannc Langer's theory of expressive form
which she developed into a complete system of esthetics in F E E L I N G A N D
F O R M . P R O B L E M S O F A R T attacks its subject from various angles, discussing
poetic creation, the dance as the dynamic image, the art symbol, and the symbol
in art, musical hearing, abstraction in science and in art.
FEELING AND FORM

In P H I L O S O P H Y I N A N E W K E Y , Susanne Langer developed a theory of
symbolism, there applied to music, which she felt could be developed to embrace
all the'arts. In F E E L I N G A N D F O R M she did just that. It offers the reader
nothing less than a systematic, comprehensive theory of art, applied in turn to
painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, music, the dance, drama, and the film.
SUSANNE LANGER
Born in N e w York City, Mrs. L a n g e r
studied for her A.B., M.A. and P h . D .
degrees at Radcliffe. She remained there
as Tutor in Philosophy for fifteen years,
later teaching at Columbia University,
among other places, arid at the Connec-
ticut College for Women, where she is
now Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
and Research Scholar. She established
her reputation with an early book, An
Introduction to Symbolic Logic, becom-
ing world-famous after the publication
of Philosophy in a New Key and Feel-
ing and Form. Since then she has writ-
ten Problems of Art, Reflections on Art,
and Mind: An Essay on Human Feel-
ing, t h e first v o l u m e of a p r o j e c t e d
three-volume theory of the human mind.
ISBN 0-684-15346-7

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BOOKS BY S U S A N N E K .

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK

© COPYRIGHT 1957 BY S U S A N N E K. LANGER

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ix THE lectures here collected between two covers do not

ONCE upon a time a student, paging through a college

PROBLEMS OF ART THE DYNAMIC IMAGE

Each makes its own image of outward reality to objectify

thickness of lines matters, and the appearance of texture

"love" is the direct object of the same verb, and desig­

some mode of feeling, sense, emotion, consciousness,

The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify

T H E interrelations among all the arts—painting, sculpture,

music united in song, plastic art and music in dance, po-

and assimilated to the dance; and for this many a third-

a desired object, an artefact. But, whereas most artefacts

spatial effect through a medium of sound, or a sense of

meet and overcome the special limitation of sculpture—a

theorists in a given time say about art, and what the

rational cogitation; that is why we call such thinking

Hobbes before him, distinguished the strictly conceptual

10 use of language in mathematics, logic, and physics from

space. The relation of poetry to the world of facts is the

(Reprinted from Structure, Method and Meaning:

AXL genuine art is abstract. The schematized shapes

reason why a logic guided by scientific aims should have

ment of logical form is so commandingly evident that

Surfaces, colors, textures and lights and shadows, tones

FEELING AND FORM

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"love" is the direct object of the same verb, and desig