But we ourselves have to play our part in the realizing of this
universal; the sense of it comes and goes; for the most part we
ourselves are not aware of it. We are merely particulars, like other
men, and separated from them by the fact that we are all particulars.
Only, when for a moment we are aware of it, then we are filled with a
passion to make it real and permanent; and it is this passion which
causes art and the blind instinctive effort at art, at communication, at
expression, which we have all experienced.
But it follows from this that the audience to which the artist addresses
himself is not any particular men and women: it is mankind. The moment
he addresses himself to any particular men and women and considers their
particular wants and desires, he is giving up that very sense of the
universal that impelled him to expression; he is ceasing to be an artist
and becoming something else, a tradesman, a philanthropist, a
politician. The artist as artist speaks to mankind, not to any
particular set of men; and he speaks not of himself but of that
universal which he has experienced. His effort is to establish that
universal relation which he has seen, a universal relation of feeling.
And to him, in his effort, there is neither time nor space. Mankind are
not here or there or of this moment or of that; they are everywhere and
for ever. The voice in Mozart's music is itself a universal voice
speaking to the universe of universal things. And all art is an acting
of the beauty that has been experienced, a perpetuation of it so that
all men may share it for ever. The artist's effort is to be the sunset
he has seen, to eternalize it in his art, but always so that he and all
men may be part of this universal by their common experience of it.
So, as I say, the artist must not speak to any particular audience with
the aim of pleasing them--there is that amount of truth in Whistler's
doctrine; and he does fail if he does not communicate, since his aim is
communication--there is that amount of truth in Tolstoy's doctrine.
But the next question that arises is the attitude of ourselves to the
artist.
We have to remember that he is speaking not to us in particular, but to
all mankind, and that he speaks, not to please us or to satisfy any
particular demand of ours, but to communicate to us that universal he
has experienced so that we with him may become part of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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