Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic - Benedetto Croce (best feel good books txt) 📗

Let us assume that they reply by dividing the inquiry into two distinct inquiries, as to the virile and feminine beauty (there really are writers who seriously discuss whether man or woman is the more beautiful); and let us continue: “Masculine or feminine beauty; but of what race of men—the white, the yellow, or the black, and whatever others there may be, according to the division of races?” Let us assume that they limit themselves to the white race, and let us continue: “What sub-species of the white race?” And when we have restricted them gradually to one section of the white world, that is to say, to the Italian, Tuscan, Siennese, or Porta Camollia section, we will continue: “Very good; but at what age of the human body, and in what condition and state of development—that of the new-born babe, of the child, of the boy, of the adolescent, of the man of middle age, and so on? and is the man at rest or at work, or is he occupied as is Paul Potter’s cow, or the Ganymede of Rembrandt?”

Having thus arrived, by successive reductions, at the individual omnimode determinatum, or, better, at the man pointed out with the finger, it will be easy to expose the other error, by recalling what has been said about the natural fact, which is now beautiful, now ugly, according to the point of view, according to what is passing in the mind of the artist. Finally, if the Gulf of Naples have its detractors, and if there be artists who declare it inexpressive, preferring the “gloomy firs,” the “clouds and perpetual north winds,” of the northern seas; let it be believed, if possible, that such relativity does not exist for the human body, source of the most various suggestions!

[Sidenote] Critique of the beauty of geometric figures.

The question of the beauty of geometrical figures is connected with aesthetic Physic. But if by geometrical figures be understood the concepts of geometry, the concept of the triangle, the square, the cone, these are neither beautiful nor ugly: they are concepts. If, on the other hand, by such figures be understood bodies which possess definite geometrical forms, these will be ugly or beautiful, like every natural fact, according to the ideal connexions in which they are placed. Some hold that those geometrical figures are beautiful which point upwards, since they give the suggestion of firmness and of force. It is not denied that such may be the case. But neither must it be denied that those also which give the impression of instability and of being crushed down may possess their beauty, where they represent just the ill-formed and the crushed; and that in these last cases the firmness of the straight line and the lightness of the cone or of the equilateral triangle would, on the contrary, seem elements of ugliness.

Certainly, such questions as to the beauty of nature and the beauty of geometry, like the others analogous of the historically beautiful and of human beauty, seem less absurd in the Aesthetic of the sympathetic, which means, at bottom, by the words “aesthetic beauty” the representation of what is pleasing. But the pretension to determine scientifically what are the sympathetic contents, and what are the irremediably antipathetic, is none the less erroneous, even in the sphere of that doctrine and after the laying down of those premises. One can only answer such questions by repeating with an infinitely long postscript the Sunt quos of the first ode of the first book of Horace, and the Havvi chi of Leopardi’s letter to Carlo Pepoli. To each man his beautiful ( = sympathetic), as to each man his fair one. Philography is not a science.

[Sidenote] Critique of another aspect of the imitation of nature.

The artist sometimes has naturally existing facts before him, in producing the artificial instrument, or physically beautiful. These are called his models: bodies, stuffs, flowers, and so on. Let us run over the sketches, the studies, and the notes of the artists: Leonardo noted down in his pocket-book, when he was working on the Last Supper: “Giovannina, fantastic appearance, is at St. Catherine’s, at the Hospital; Cristofano di Castiglione is at the Piet�, he has a fine head; Christ, Giovan Conte, is of the suite of Cardinal Mortaro.” And so on.

From this comes the illusion that the artist imitates nature; when it would perhaps be more exact to say that nature imitates the artist, and obeys him. The theory that art imitates nature has sometimes been grounded upon and found sustenance in this illusion, as also its variant, more easily to be defended, which makes art the idealizer of nature. This last theory presents the process in a disorderly manner, indeed inversely to the true order; for the artist does not proceed from extrinsic reality, in order to modify it by approaching it to the ideal; but he proceeds from the impression of external nature to expression, that is to say, to his ideal, and from this he passes to the natural fact, which he employs as the instrument of reproduction of the ideal fact.

[Sidenote] Critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful.

Another consequence of the confusion between the aesthetic and the physical fact is the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful.

If expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact, in which it externalizes itself, can well be divided and subdivided; for example, a painted surface, into lines and colours, groups and curves of lines, kinds of colours, and so on; a poem, into strophes, verses, feet, syllables; a piece of prose, into chapters, paragraphs, headings, periods, phrases, words, and so on. The parts thus obtained are not aesthetic facts, but smaller physical facts, cut up in an arbitrary manner. If this path were followed, and the confusion persisted in, we should end by concluding that the true forms of the beautiful are atoms.

The aesthetic law, several times promulgated, that beauty must have bulk, could be invoked against the atoms. It cannot be the imperceptibility of the too small, nor the unapprehensibility of the too large. But a bigness which depends upon perceptibility, not measurement, derives from a concept widely different from the mathematical. For what is called imperceptible and incomprehensible does not produce an impression, because it is not a real fact, but a concept: the requisite of bulk in the beautiful is thus reduced to the effective reality of the physical fact, which serves for the reproduction of the beautiful.

[Sidenote] Critique of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful.

Continuing the search for the physical laws or for the objective conditions of the beautiful, it has been asked: To what physical facts does the beautiful correspond? To what the ugly? To what unions of tones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? Such inquiries are as if in Political Economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange in the physical nature of the objects exchanged. The constant infecundity of the attempt should have at once given rise to some suspicion as to its vanity. In our times, especially, has the necessity for an inductive Aesthetic been often proclaimed, of an Aesthetic starting from below, which should proceed like natural science and not hasten its conclusions. Inductive? But Aesthetic has always been both inductive and deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deduction cannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize a true science. But the word “inductive” was not here pronounced accidentally and without special intention. It was wished to imply by its use that the aesthetic fact is nothing, at bottom, but a physical fact, which should be studied by applying to it the methods proper to the physical and natural sciences. With such a presupposition and in such a faith did inductive Aesthetic or Aesthetic of the inferior (what pride in this modesty!) begin its labours. It has conscientiously begun by making a collection of beautiful things, for example of a great number of envelopes of various shapes and sizes, and has asked which of these give the impression of the beautiful and which of the ugly. As was to be expected, the inductive aestheticians speedily found themselves in a difficulty, for the same objects that appeared ugly in one aspect would appear beautiful in another. A yellow, coarse envelope, which would be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing a love-letter, is, however, just what is wanted for a writ served by process on stamped paper. This in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any rate an irony, if enclosed in a square English envelope. Such considerations of simple common sense should have sufficed to convince inductive aestheticians, that the beautiful has no physical existence, and cause them to remit their vain and ridiculous quest. But no: they have had recourse to an expedient, as to which we would find it difficult to say how far it belongs to natural science. They have sent their envelopes round from one to the other and opened a referendum, thus striving to decide by the votes of the majority in what consists the beautiful and the ugly.

We will not waste time over this argument, because we should seem to be turning ourselves into narrators of comic anecdotes rather than expositors of aesthetic science and of its problems. It is an actual fact, that the inductive aestheticians have not yet discovered one single law.

[Sidenote] Astrology of Aesthetic.

He who dispenses with doctors is prone to abandon himself to charlatans.

Thus it has befallen those who have believed in the natural laws of the beautiful. Artists sometimes adopt empirical canons, such as that of the proportions of the human body, or of the golden section, that is to say, of a line divided into two parts in such a manner that the less is to the greater as is the greater to the whole line (_bc: ac=ac: ab_). Such canons easily become their superstitions, and they attribute to such the success of their works. Thus Michael Angelo left as a precept to his disciple Marco del Pino of Siena that “he should always make a pyramidal serpentine figure multiplied by one, two, three,” a precept which did not enable Marco di Siena to emerge from that mediocrity which we can yet observe in his many works, here in Naples. Others extracted from the sayings of Michael Angelo the precept that serpentine undulating lines were the true lines of beauty. Whole volumes have been composed on these laws of beauty, on the golden section and on the undulating and serpentine lines. These should in our opinion be looked upon as the astrology of Aesthetic.

THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION, TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS

[Sidenote] The practical activity of externalization.

The fact of the production of the physically beautiful implies, as has already been remarked, a vigilant will, which persists in not allowing certain visions, intuitions, or representations, to be lost. Such a will must be able to act with the utmost rapidity, and as it were instinctively, and also be capable of long and laborious deliberations.

Thus and only thus does the practical activity enter into relations with the aesthetic, that is to say, in effecting the production of physical objects, which are aids to memory. Here it is not merely a concomitant, but really a distinct moment of the aesthetic activity. We cannot will or not will our aesthetic vision: we can, however, will or not will to externalize it, or better, to preserve and communicate, or not, to others, the externalization produced.

[Sidenote] The technique of externalization.

This volitional fact of externalization is preceded by a complex of various kinds of