Chapter 42

The Elements Of Art.

_The True, the Good, the Beautiful._

Though Delsarte be acknowledged the discoverer of the law of æsthetics, he may have held points in common with many who before him had had presentiments of its coming and had instinctively experienced its force. Premonitions precede the discovery as complements should follow.

The True, the Good, the Beautiful, constituent elements of æsthetics, have been diversely interpreted. From his intellectual observatory, a zenith whence the artist-philosopher viewed clearly the whole and the details, he may be supposed to have gained light beyond any which could have come to his predecessors.

I will, then, resume my parallel from this point of view.

The True, the Good and the Beautiful were not made, in the school of Delsarte, objects of special teaching. By definitions, reflections and illustrations of the master, they were shown to enter fully into the science and method--a part of it distinguishable and inseparable. The master, in his demonstrations, commonly employed various well-known maxims which were always accredited to their authors. Thus, from Plato: "The Beautiful is the splendor of the True." From St. Thomas Aquinas, in regard to science: "In creation all is done by number, weight and measure." From St. Augustine (for he often quoted from sacred works): "Moral beauty is the brilliancy of the Good."

But I must proceed in order. I owe it to the sincerity of my endeavor to explain first the æsthetic work of Delsarte as shown me by his own teachings.

_The True._

The True Illuminates the Thought.

To determine the signification of the _True_, we must first ask what is _truth?_ It has been defined as: "A fixed principle, an axiom." The term truth has been applied to such or such maxims; but there are few assertions not subject to discussion or which would be accepted as decisive without comment. They have not that piercing clearness which determines conviction by simple apprehension or at first sight.

The dictionary of the Academy is more explicit in its statement: "Truth is the conformity of the idea to its object." But a preferable definition is that of Madame Clémence Royer: "Truth is the concept of the spirit in regard to the reality of things and the laws which govern them." This philosophical statement is readily adapted to the True in the arts, which is acquired by the observation of nature and adaptation of the lawful ideal.

How, then, may we recognize the True in æsthetics according to this definition? The artist, first and above all, should disregard no law of nature, but when he aspires to great works, "the concept of his spirit in regard to the reality of things and their laws" should lead him to idealize what he sees, translating his personal conception of the Beautiful and the Sublime, if his flight carry him so far.

The word Art is more comprehensive in that which it expresses, than the word True. _Art_ completes itself by its other elements, the _Beautiful_ and the _Good_. Plato, and the philosophers in general, treated of truth from the stand-point of philosophy rather than of art. Still the great Athenian seemed to believe in a sort of celestial museum, where the artist, penetrating by intuition, was inspired by a vision, more or less clear, of the masterpieces of divine conception.

Delsarte approached in a certain sense this very idea, but his doctrine of the True in art, although depending upon the mystic basis of a holy Trinity, brought forth developments both rational and scientific which leave far behind the Platonic hypothesis.

In the system of Delsarte it is no longer a vague ideal dimly perceptible, which must guide the artist in the execution of his work, for the _innovator_ says expressly that "the divine thought is written in man himself." It is therefore at the command of every one who seeks truth to make it manifest in art. In the new system, man being at once the _artist_ and _object of art_, literary men, sculptors and painters proceed from a basis ever to be observed and studied, to rise from the True to the Ideal. Here the flight must be more rapid and, above all, less deceptive than the purely mystic fancy of Plato.

We shall see in considering the _Beautiful_ in the arts, that far from giving rise to arbitrary and fantastic conceptions, the great ideal must become, according to the science and method of the master,--the aggrandizement and the harmony of the faculties of the human being.

_The Good._

The Good Sanctifies the Soul.

What is the Good in art? Here again the philosophical standard bars the way and demands priority. What, then, is _Good_ independent of varied feelings and of all the varied and contradictory interests of human subjectivity which encumber it in the minds of the multitude of thinking people?

The Good, after this elimination, is reduced or rather elevated to one simple idea, so general and requisite is it. The Good seems to be that which can give to the greatest number of beings, existing in the universe (conformably to their hierarchy), the greatest sum of happiness and perfection, considering, for humanity, the importance of the mutual relations of the faculties. If this be true of the Good in life, is not a way clearly traced for art, whose mission is to embellish existence? And, further, if it be incontestable, that man cannot transgress the laws of his nature without wronging his intelligence and his happiness, even his strength and beauty, how shall art merit our love and homage if its power be exerted to excite inferior faculties and subversive passions? Are not _poise_ and _harmony_ the best conditions of existence for the human organism? That which Plato demanded for the _Beautiful_ in favor of the _True_--namely, splendor--Delsarte demanded also of _art_ in favor of the _Good_. His thought is summed up in this formula, "Man is the object of art." Man, being artist, becomes the agent of æsthetics. Man, in his humanity, is the goal toward which should tend all the efforts and experiments of the art-moralizer.

The master maintained the possibility of reaching this end by two opposing ways, not contradictory; _i.e._, the production of the Beautiful under its physical, mental and moral forms; and by the manifestation of the Ugly under the same forms, exhibiting what he called the _hideousness of vice_. Immorality may be rendered poetical and artistic, because of its being a corruption of the moral, often preserving the imprint of its origin, even throughout its greatest errors. Its agitation, its combats and its defeats interest the judgment and the heart. The Ugly or unseemly, morally speaking, is the synonym of vice.

The Ugly in the language of the arts has many diverse significations. It is in these shades and variable proportions that it affects our subject, but the depicting of repulsive things, foreign to morality, to sentiment and to passion, has no right to exist in æsthetics. It may be possible to cure a vice by showing its hideousness. But does this warrant such exciting of the disgust of the senses? It is an outrage to the worship of the Beautiful, without compensation of any kind.

There can be no advantage to humanity in exhibiting the hideousness of disease or the monstrosities of certain natural phenomena! Open to them the museums of comparative anatomy, but close the galleries consecrated to the fine arts! There exist also monstrosities which are not included in these categories; they present no moral danger, but are disagreeable and repulsive to good taste. They consist of fantastic forms, in accordance with the spirit of an inferior civilization, reminding one of the misshapen and gigantic prehistoric animals, whose bones astound us, and which disappeared from our globe that man might appear.

Among cultivated contemporaries these eccentricities spring from an inclination toward originality, caprice, grotesque taste; from a similar impulse to that which directs literature toward burlesque and parodies, and the plastic arts toward caricature. Such productions may please some distinguished and intelligent natures which cannot have been highly favored in the distribution of the delicacies of sentiment and the exquisite graces of wit. In a word, the art indulging in this class of manifestations acts according to the _mode simpliste_. I borrow this term from Charles Fourier, and I say once for all, that by it I mean not the entire, but the almost exclusive predominance of one or the other of the modalities of the human being. Here the _simplisme_ being altogether intellectual, while it is inferior to manifestations in which the being expands harmoniously, it wounds no essential in the synthesis of the _me_; while a predomination of the sensual to the same degree is most pernicious to that which delights in it and antipathetic to those who do not live solely in the material aspects of existence.

Existing among the elements of æsthetics, as the faculties of man, are certain dependencies, connections, affinities, penetrations, which render an abstraction of one of them almost impossible. Thus I have anticipated allusions to the Beautiful in considering the Good. By thus connecting them, the better to distinguish them, I have reached the conclusion that moral evil should never be manifested in the arts unless with the view of redressing it. In this case the better its real characteristics are studied, the more strongly they are accentuated throughout, the more successful the work will be from the plastic point of view, and the more power it will have to repel those inward wrongs which it denounces, and this even though the intention of the artist should not touch this result.

_The Beautiful._

The Beautiful Purifies the Emotions.

At first glance, it might seem the privilege of each one to say, "The Beautiful is that which appears to me as such." I believe in this regard, that the most capable artist, should he be also the most perfect logician, would never be able to persuade sainted and simple ignorance that it should not remain firmly grounded upon faith in its own impressions.

Place Hugo, Mercié, Bonnat, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Joncières in the presence of simple countrymen--or, what is worse still, of inferior artists and critics, of pretentious amateurs--and you will see by what supercilious, incredulous gestures, being incapable of argument, this satisfied ignorance will repel all assertions of the great authorities.

Should we, therefore, disregard this reluctance to recognize the features of the Beautiful in great works? We must at least deduce from it the fact that the effect of art depends upon some relation between the observer and the thing observed.

Notwithstanding the reality of the beauties of such or such a work, in the eyes of many appreciators, the subjectivity of each observer should remain decisive, _vis-à-vis_ to himself, as long as he cannot be convinced by the authority of a law; and, finally, it is imperative that his comprehension of that law should be rendered possible by preliminary studies. On the contrary, shall that which has been recognized as beautiful by the initiated ever since artists created, and enlightened criticism discussed and judged it, appear now before uncultivated criticism as without authority?

In default of law and science, there is a sort of universal consent among competent thinkers; and their appreciation of the highest class of works is maintained by a process of adhesion carried on by every conversion from ignorant blindness to the light of appreciation.

The question of subjectivity in the declared judgments in æsthetics has given rise to incessant controversies which began, perhaps, among the Greeks and are going on among us. Though no absolute decision has been reached, some excellent maxims have resulted. In default of an irrefutable definition of the Beautiful, there have been given us images, analogies and thoughts upon the subject which approach and prepare for such definitions:

Victor Cousin has said: "It is reason which decides as to the Beautiful and reduces it to the sensation of the agreeable, and taste has no further law."

"Aversion accompanies the Ugly (unseemly) as love walks hand in hand with the Beautiful."

"The Beautiful inspires love profound but not passionate."

"The artist perceives only the Beautiful where the sensual man sees only the attractive or frightful."

And, again, "That is sublime which presents the idea of the Infinite."

This last thought brings us to Delsarte, who, perhaps, was its inspiration.

The following valuable thoughts of the master, while not related scientifically to his system, are still allied to its physical and philosophical aspects:

"Form," says the innovator in æsthetics, "is the vestment of substance; it is the expressive symbol of a mysterious truth; it is the stamp of a hidden virtue, the actuality of being; in a word, form is the plastic of the Ideal."

"The Beautiful is the transparency of the aptitudes of the agent, and it radiates from the faculties which govern it. It is order which results from the dynamical disposition of forms."

"Beauty is the reason which presides at the creation of things; it is the invisible power which draws us and subjugates us in them."

"The Beautiful comprises three characters, which we distinguish under the following titles: Ideal, moral and plastic beauty."

By the enunciation of these three categories, Delsarte enters upon the positive aspect of his system. As the result of the careful examination of the aptitudes or faculties of the Ego, approachable by analysis and applied to æsthetics, he has established this first class of manifestations (ideal beauty) as requisite to art. This must result from a combination of the faculties; the possibilities of combination being infinite, but always in subjection to the human being. The artist, according to this personal power of inspiration, should be able to portray a totality of superior and harmonious qualities, such as will oblige any competent observer to recognize it as beautiful. We have taken a step into the realm of the Ideal; that is to say, we have touched that which, without departing from the law, surpasses conventional rule and the natural types accepted for the Beautiful.

Before following the Ideal into its ethereal region, we will further consider the nature of its foundation, which is a combination of the three mother faculties which Delsarte declares to be, in æsthetics, the criterion of the law and the foundation of the science. We already recognize these as the physical, mental and moral aspects of the human being.

The plastic art allies itself particularly to the physical constitution, but the physique cannot be perfectly beautiful unless it manifests intellectual and moral faculties.

Moral and intellectual beauty reveal themselves in the human being under the empire of passion and of sentiment, and the physique is momentarily transformed. The artist should seize beauty at this moment of fullest perfection, above the normal conditions of human existence and perhaps beyond possible plastic beauty.

Behold what glorious possibility for the direction of the artist's aspirations toward the Beautiful! But even this happy chance by no means includes all of the possible conceptions of the Ideal, and neither does it furnish us any absolute idea or definition. This vision of beauty, made ideal by exaltation of the intelligence and the emotion, can only be perceived by the artist of practiced observation and of that intuitive perception which is the gift of nature.

Again considered, the Ideal, being relative as well as the Beautiful, of which it is the exuberance, we must remember that the word is far from corresponding to an idea of absolute beauty. Thus the Ideal of an ordinary taste is not so high as that of a person whose standard of beauty is superior, and the two will be very distant from the image conceived by the pen, the chisel or the brush of a great artist. In many cases the Ideal is nothing but a searching for the intention of nature, obliterated by the circumstances and accidents of life. Then the task of the artist should be to reëstablish the type in his logic--a vulgar face may be portrayed by a skilful brush--and, while preserving its features, there may be put into it the culture of intellect and noble sentiments.

An artist, for instance, will see in a woman, whom time has tried, certain elements of beauty which enable him to portray her nearly as she was at the age of twenty years. He should be able to divine in the young girl, according to the normal development of her features, her appearance at the complete unfolding of her beauty. Yes; in these different cases the artist shall have idealized, since he shall have comprehended, penetrated, interpreted and rectified nature. Still, he may not yet have attained to the comprehension of perfect beauty, such, at least, as human emotion and intellect can conceive, and such as we love to imagine as inhabiting the superior spheres of the universe of which we know nothing further than the dictate of our reason, namely, that they are inhabited by beings more or less like ourselves.

When these sublime effects appear in art, it is as though a veil were torn, revealing glimpses of a world of ideas, emotions and impressions, surpassing our comprehension, approachable only by our aspirations.

Thus, Delsarte, superior to his science, has shown us the artist in full possession of all that he has acquired, and the inmost charm of that which is revealed to him. In execution he proved this truth: If talent may be born of science, it is genius which distinguishes the highest personalities, and to merit the title of high artistic personality one must contain in himself an essence indescribable, unutterable, which constitutes the aureole of grand brows, and the sign luminous of great works of art.

Thus, as virtue, art has its degrees.

Art, in its most simple expression, is the faithful representation of nature. If the conception of a work or of a type is elevated to a degree of perfection which satisfies at once the plastic sense, the emotion and the intellect, we will call it Grand Art.

Finally, if, in the presence of a creation, we recognize perfect harmony (which goes beyond perfect proportion); if the work call forth in us that contemplative ecstasy which gives us the impression and, as it were, the vision of pure beauty, shall we not recognize Supreme Art?

The system of Delsarte responds to all these desiderata of æsthetics. In his law he gives us the necessary bases; by his science he indicates the practical means, by his method and illustrations he completes the science and demonstrates the law. Where is place left for doubt or contradiction?

He stated what he knew and how he had learned it. In his recitals occurred innumerable beautiful proofs of his greatness and simplicity, oftentimes more convincing than lengthy, involved argument could ever be.

Some may ask: How can a positive science lead toward an ideal which cannot be touched, heard not seen? Would not this science be the antipode (some would say _antidote_) of the mystic dreams of Plato and of Delsarte himself?

Reply is easy. Delsarte recognized in our mental consciousness that desire for research into the unknown which would sound the mysteries of nature. He did not disregard that intuitive force of imagination which can often form from simple known elements the concept of conditions superior to the tangible.

Between this nature, which we hear and see and touch, and that nature which the artist feels, imagines, and to which he aspires, Delsarte has placed a ladder whose base is among us, and whose summit is lost in the infinite spaces of fiction and poesy. By this ascent into the realm of liberty, of personality and of genius, the elect of æsthetics shall mount and gain, and, still maintaining their relations with the Real, shall bring down to us the glorious trophies of their art.

Delsarte, foremost among men, had climbed the magic ladder. His exquisite harmonies in the dramatic art and lyric declamation were beautiful indeed, but the æsthetic beauties which he brought forth in the roles that he interpreted, must, alas! disappear with him. He has left us the bases of his science, but who shall so beautifully tread the way--reigning by song amidst a thousand accents of devoted enthusiasm!