We should overrun our limits if we were to follow out the admirable
discussion in which M. Taine extends this definition to architecture
and music. These closely allied arts are distinguished from poetry,
painting, and sculpture, by appealing far less directly to the
intelligence, and far more exclusively to the emotions. Yet these arts
likewise aim, by bringing into prominence certain relations of symmetry
in form as perceived by the eye, or in aerial vibrations as perceived by
the ear, to excite in us the states of feeling with which these species
of symmetry are by subtle laws of association connected. They, too,
imitate, not literally, but under the guidance of a predominating
sentiment or emotion, relations which really exist among the phenomena
of nature. And here, too, we estimate excellence, not in proportion to
the direct, but to the indirect imitation. A Gothic cathedral is not,
as has been supposed, directly imitated from the towering vegetation of
Northern forests; but it may well be the expression of the dim sentiment
of an unseen, all-pervading Power, generated by centuries of primeval
life amid such forests. So the sounds which in a symphony of Beethoven
are woven into a web of such amazing complexity may exist in different
combinations in nature; but when a musician steps out of his way to
imitate the crowing of cocks or the roar of the tempest, we regard
his achievement merely as a graceful conceit. Art is, therefore, an
imitation of nature; but it is an intellectual and not a mechanical
imitation; and the performances of the camera and the music-box are
not to be classed with those of the violinist's bow or the sculptor's
chisel.
And lastly, in distinguishing art from science, Taine remarks, that
in disengaging from their complexity the causes which are at work in
nature, and the fundamental laws according to which they work, science
describes them in abstract formulas conveyed in technical language. But
art reveals these operative causes and these dominant laws, not in arid
definitions, inaccessible to most people, intelligible only to specially
instructed men, but in a concrete symbol, addressing itself not only to
the understanding, but still more to the sentiments of the ordinary man.
Art has, therefore, this peculiarity, that it is at once elevated and
popular, that it manifests that which is often most recondite, and that
it manifests it to all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account