Margaret MacDonald
Art and Imagination
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 53 (1952 - 1953), pp. 205-226
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Meeting of the Aristotelian Society, 21, Bedford Square, London,
W.C.1, on Monday, April 13th, 1953, at 7.30 p.m.
XI.—ART AND IMAGINATION.
By MARGARET MACDONALD.
TRADITIONAL theories of aesthetics, like other traditional philosophical theories, tend to begin in paradox and end in tautology or verbal legislation. They seek a completely general answer to the question "What is art?" or a simple definition of "Art" which will apply to all works of art without exception. The procedure, as for other problems, is to formulate such a definition from characteristics of some of the objects ordinarily covered by the term to be defined and then either to extend the defining expression by analogy to other members of the group which yet have such different characteristics that its meaning evaporates or to exclude from the original field those objects to which it cannot significantly be applied. The result is a well-known series of formulae or slogans; "Art is Imitation", "Art is Significant Form", "Art is Expression", "Art is Imagination" and many others. These have been hurled at each other by rival theorists throughout the history of aesthetics and criticism with no clear realization of their linguistic function. Tautologies have been reverenced as profound truths; verbal legislation as major discovery. By their partial light not only individual works but whole arts have been sacrificed. Music, architecture and pottery by consistent imitationists or representationalists; much of literature and painting by consistent formalists and likewise for the rest. In fact, all these formulae emphasize some important features of many works of art but fail to give a satisfactory account of the subject because their inventors ignore the complexities of discourse about art, and the logic of language.One restriction often imposed by aesthetic philosophers and some critics on the term "work of art" is to limit its use to works of what are sometimes called the "fine arts",
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i.e., the arts of painting, sculpture, literature, music and, sometimes, architecture. Such works it was supposed were produced solely for their "beauty" even though, like those of architecture, they also served some useful purpose. They were primarily designed to appeal to the cultivated tastes of wealthy and leisured patrons. Any work not so produced and contemplated must be relegated to a lower category. That the aesthetic attitude is contemplative I do not deny. I do, however, deny that the term "work of art" is thus restricted in the ordinary use of laymen and most critics. For any artefact whatsoever may, in certain circumstances, also be a work of art. It may be valued for its own sake as well as for any function it was designed to fulfil. Thus one may admire the lines of a yacht, or a jet plane, the arrangement of a garden, the style of a gown as well as the qualities of those objects of the alleged "fine" arts, poems, pictures, statues, musical compositions, buildings. The purpose or lack of purpose for which a work was produced is irrelevant to whether or not it is a work of art. This depends rather upon its own qualities though to say that it is a work of art is to imply that it is worth contemplating for itself regardless of other claims. But this attitude is taken by an audience, not necessarily by a producer. That this is so is shown by the fact that it is perfectly possible to decide that an object is a work of art while quite impossible to determine why it was produced. Stone Age cave paintings are admitted by critics to be works of art yet no-one knows or may ever know why they were painted. The range of objects, therefore, which may be called works of art is very wide and exceedingly various. It forms an extensive sub-group of the total class of artefacts1 united by an indefinite number of related and over-lapping characteristics and is thus a
1 Artefacts and hence works of art, too, are usually distinguished from works of nature or natural objects. Ming jars and Greek dramas from trees and thunderstorms. But the distinction is far from absolute. I have suggested that a garden may be called a work of art. It is interesting that a B.B.C. programme on The Surrey Landscape (Home Service, July 26, 1953) described the County of Surrey as a "work of art", the work of 18th century landownders and gardeners like Capability Brown who uprooted woods and planted groves, diverted streams and dug artificial lakes and generally opened up the "prospect" for the great houses so that what now seems to be a work of nature might equally be termed an artificial creation.
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heterogenous though not an indiscriminate collection2. It may be likened, in the current fashion, rather to a family having different branches than to a class united by common properties which can be expressed in a simple an comprehensive definition.
Obviously, no single work or kind of work will exhibit all the qualities which justify the ascription "work of art" but every such work will manifest a selection of these qualities. It is these selections present in certain works and especially those favoured at a particular period which are generalized and exalted into absolute standards by aesthetic philosophers. They are enshrined in the slogans already mentioned. Some works, e.g., excellently represent natural objects, scenes, emotions, situations. They are faithful to or imitate, life. So, for certain theorists, all works worthy to be called works of art must do likewise. Art is Imitation. As already suggested, one consequence of this view—and similar consequences follow any alternative of the same type—is that many works ordinarily included within it must be rejected from the category of art. Works of architecture are one example. True, one building may be a replica of another; Westminster Cathedral may be a "copy" of Milan Cathedral3 but a building cannot represent or copy something which is not a building as, e.g., a painted surface may represent a cornfield without being either earth or corn; or a statue may represent a human form. Chartres Cathedral is a cathedral. It does not "represent" a cathedral or any other object. But it is more certain that some buildings are works of art than that the theory of imitation is true.
I do not, however, intend to attempt a complete analysis of the concept of art. My theme is the connection of art with another concept with which it has been historically allied and which has also formed the basis of an aesthetic theory. I shall mention other theories only so far as this may be necessary to elucidate at least some of the relations
2 Cf. M. Macdonald, review of The Philosophy of the Arts by M. Weitz Mind, N.S. vol LX, pp. 563-564, 1951.
3 I am not sure whether this is true but it does not matter for my purpose.
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between art and imagination and any cognate notions. I have chosen this topic because it often seems in some sense very fundamental to art, but it is difficult to obtain from writings on aesthetics satisfactory answers to why and in what sense this is so.
Firstly, the notion of Imagination enters differently into different aesthetic (and critical) theories according to other notions with which it is contrasted. Moreover, some of these differences connect more directly than others with ordinary uses of the words "imagination", "imagine" and their cognates. I am not at present prepared to say that these differences themselves represent different uses of such words. But certainly some theories about art and imagination are more "metaphysical" than others. Secondly, such theories may differ in width. At least, some of them may be more narrowly expounded and applied though it is not certain that nevertheless they do not have wider implications. For example, the most popular doctrines of the relation between art and imagination in English are confined to literature and particularly to poetry. I refer to the doctrines of Coleridge and other poets and critics of the romantic movement which have been continued by their modern followers4. Nevertheless, none of these writers explicitly denies that what is true of imagination in literature is true of it also in other arts. But if applied to those other arts, the doctrines would seem much less plausible without much modification. But even less explicit theorists make a similar restriction. For Shakespeare, e.g., it is the poet, not the painter, sculptor or musician, who is, like the lunatic and the lover "of Imagination all compact"5. This may be due to the fact that Englishmen are more interested in literature than any other art. When Bacon, e.g., divided the human mind into the Faculties of Sensation, Reason, Memory and Imagination, he allotted Philosophy to Reason, History to Memory (whose memory, one wonders?) and Poesy, not art in general, to Imagination6. He thus suggests either than poetry is the
4 Cf. D.G. James, Scepticism and Poetry (1937) and R.L. Brett, The Third Ear of Shaftesbury (1951).
5 A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, Scene 1.
6 Advancement of Learning, Bk. II.
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sole art or that other arts do not use imagination. But then it would be odd to describe music and painting as either philosophy or history, i.e., as forms of analytic reasoning or remembering. Probably, if pressed, Bacon would have pushed these other arts into the pigeon-hole of Sensation. But they would not stay there quietly. For Sensation as the lowliest of the faculty hierarchy was invariably thought to provide by passive reception the "raw material" upon which the higher faculties worked. But painters and composers do not passively see and hear what is "given" but actively produce what may be seen and heard by themselves and others. So their works cannot simply be allotted to Sensation as their origin. Indeed, the mythical matings of faculty psychology are totally inadequate to explain any of their alleged progeny, including the arts. It does not, of course, follow that artists are not sometimes correctly called "imaginative" and that this is not aesthetically important. It is also much more natural to speak of an "imaginative writer" than of an "imaginative painter" or an "imaginative composer" and this may also be important.
Examples of the wider doctrine which does define all works of art as works of imagination are the theories of R.G. Collingwood7, Jean-Paul Sartre,8 both influenced by Croce. According to them a work of art must be distinguished from all physical objects, even from such objects as the picture on the gallery wall, the sounds filling the concert hall, the printed volume from which the novel is being read. One reason given for this is that although a work of art cannot be communicated to others without a physical vehicle it can be imagined, and thus internally produced, by an artist who did not choose to manifest it externally. I think the relation is somewhat complex between works of art and physical objects, or, rather, between what is correctly said about works of art and the physical world.9 But this is not
7 Principles of Art. Oxford University Press, 1938.
8 The Psychology of Imagination, trans. Philosophical Library, N.Y., 1948, Conclusion, Sec. 2, "The Work of Art".
9 Cf. "Art and the 'Object of Art'" by Paul Ziff, Mind, N.S., vol. LX, 1951, pp. 466-480, but I think Mr. Ziff simplifies the problem by confining his remarks to objects of the plastic arts.
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elucidated by the metaphor popular with certain aesthetic philosophers of a work of art as a mysterious message transmitted by an intrinsically worthless instrument, the physical medium. The very notion of a medium suggests the spiritualist séance rather than the study of studio. Nevertheless, it does make sense (though it may be false) to say that Shakespeare made up a play which he did not write down or get performed and that no-one but he knew of this. So, it is argued, this situation may be generalised. Every work of art might similarly exist privately and remain uncommunicated. Physical labour is, therefore, not essential to a work of art which must be an imaginary object, a mental creation or private fantasy. But none of these consequences follow. There may, indeed, be good evidence to show that an artist had contemplated and even thought out a work which he never committed to word, paint, sound or other material. He may have described the work in a letter, diary or orally. But I doubt if an ordinary person would unhesitatingly assert that he had thereby produced the work. If the work were one of the plastic arts I think this would certainly be denied. For it seems absurd to say of someone that he had painted a picture or carved a statue without the use of tools or materials. An imaginary picture or statue just isn't a picture or statue because these words stand for works which need hands as well as heads to bring them into existence. This may not be quite so clear for other works of art. I have said that Shakespeare might have made up a play which he did not write down or get performed. Similarly, Mozart might have composed a melody, say a setting for a song, which was never sung and for which he did not produce a score. Would one say that these works had existed and been lost to the world? Perhaps. Normally, a lost literary or musical work is one of which the text or score has disappeared or been forgotten, not one which no text or score, written or oral, existed. But while no-one would say that a picture which had not been painted however clearly a painter had imagined or even described it, had existed and been lost one might hesitate to deny that a poem or a song had existed because it was known only to
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its author and had never been spoken or sung aloud. For if this had been done, only once, and had been overheard there would be no good reason to deny the existence of the work though it were never heard again. This seems to attribute an exaggerated artistic importance to the mechanical processes of making visible and audible. An imaginary picture is not a picture and is of an entirely different logical type because the work of producing a picture cannot be done or, at least, completed without physical labour. But the task of making up a poem or story or composing a tune may sometimes be over before these are spoken, sung or written down. Moreover, there seems to be no substantial difference between what is imagined and what is uttered, heard, written and read. I do not think these facts justify the conclusions of idealist aesthetic philosophers but they may give some excuse for them and do also show discrepancies between the works of different arts which are important for aesthetics. Yet although one may sometimes wonder whether an unrevealed poem or tune may properly be called a poem or tune, it does not follow that every literary and musical work still less every work of art is imaginary. For the circumstances I have described in which one might ask this question include the fact that it is asked of the work of an established artist. Of one who had never produced a public work it would be absurd to ask whether he might be a silent rival to all known artists. One who never exhibits his artistic skill is not a very "pure" artist but a fraud. Of a reputable author or composer, however, it might be sensible to ask whether all his works were known and there might be reason to believe they were not. I do not assert that we positively should add an imagined sonnet to the Shakespearean corpus but only that we might, rightly, hesitate and be inclined to do so as we should not hesitate to exclude an imagined statue from the works of Rodin. The hesitation would be due to a strong conflicting tendency to call works of art only certain public objects. This is, I am sure the primary use of the word for all and the sole use for some, works. Works of art are, primarily, public, perceptual objects made by someone using
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technical skill. There may be a distinction between artists and craftsmen, as Collingwood insisted10, but the borderland is wide and all artists, as makers, are also craftsmen. What they make and with what kind of skill, however, varies widely. In the plastic arts (painting and sculpture), the finished work is, normally, a physical object of the same sort as stones and stars. If asked to count the number of objects in a room one would include the Ming jar and the Turner as well as the rest. These works are enduring, particular objects each with its spatio-temporal position. They are, moreover, distinguished, as originals, from all replicas or copies11. They are made in the comparatively simple sense of being constructed from physical materials and only attention by a spectator is needed to perceive them as they were created12. In a fairly straightforward sense one now "sees" the same picture or statue as the artist painted or modelled. The situation is less simple for literary and musical words of art. [sic; "works"??] To revert to the room already mentioned. One would probably include in the collection of its objects the books in the bookcase and the scores on the music stand. It would not, however, be so clear that one had thereby included Shakespeare's plays or Verdi's operas. First, because no author or composer directly produces a printed volume. Secondly, though he might produce a pile of written or typewritten manuscript and this might be referred to as the work, it would also, and perhaps more correctly, be called the text or score of the work. More correctly, because written or printed texts and scores are not necessary to the existence of literature and music. The primary form of such works is vocal and their survival formerly depended entirely upon memory and oral transmission. Spoken narrative, recitations, songs are not,
10 Principles of Art, Pt. 1, Ch. 2 O.U.P. 1938
11 It has been pointed out to me that such works as etchings and woodcuts are exceptions to this. What the artist directly produces in these is an engraved plate or worked block. These, however, are not identified with or exhibited as the etching or woodcut but only prints taken from them of which they may be many, each an original. They would not be so called, however, unless taken from the object prepared by the artist.
12I ignore for this purpose such later operations as the cleaning of an old work the emending of a text or score, etc.
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however, physical objects. They are rather physical events which begin, continue and then cease to exist. They are more like flashes of lightning and showers of rain than rocks and planets. But such events are public to all observers while they last. So are literary and musical performances. If, however, the corresponding work is identified with any one such performance it is obvious that compared with pictures and statues literary and musical works have a very brief existence. Well, it is possible that some have. A work might never be repeated after its first performance and be forgotten. Many thrilling camp fire stories and epic poems must have so perished. True, a picture or statue might be completed and immediately destroyed. The difference is that this need not happen whereas it is (I think, logically) impossible that the performance of a literary or musical work should continue for more than a very limited time. It would be absurd, e.g., to suppose a play or symphony whose performance lasted a year. Yet there are many works of literature and music which have outlasted many works of the plastic arts.
"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme"13(An optimistic remark in view of the author's well-known habit of leaving his offspring for players and patrons to preserve.) How does this happen? The poem (or symphony) outlives its competitors if at some time or place there is, or could be, a physical presentation of it. Such occurrences are not copies, replicas or reproductions of an original. A performance of Hamlet now is not a reproduction of the first or any other production. Nor is it a copy of the text. To say that would be absurd. Nor are these performances many but related to a single source as the etching to its incised plate. Yet they are each and all manifestations of "the same work." Thus works of literature and music lack the definite spatio-temporal position of most works of the plastic arts. They exist wherever and whenever they are physically manifested. One cannot sensibly ask for the whereabouts of
13 W. Shakespeare. Sonnet 55.
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Shakespeare's plays and Beethoven's symphonies as one can for that of the Mona Lisa and St. Paul's Cathedral.
This distinction between the sense of "play" (and any comparable term) in which Shakespeare wrote only one play called Hamlet and that in which Hamlet has been played one hundred times this season has been likened to that between particular and universal and between type and token in the use of words. The first is wrong. The relation between a performance of Hamlet and the play may seem, superficially, to resemble that between the colour of this paper and "whiteness". The paper with its colour may be destroyed, but not whiteness; the performance ends but Hamlet remains. But differences make the comparison more misleading than helpful. It would be nonsense to talk of a performance of the play as an "instance" of Hamlet as the colour of this paper is an instance of whiteness. Universals are qualities and relations. Hamlet does not characterize the performances of the play nor does it relate to any objects. Finally, universals are timeless. It makes no sense to ask when whiteness and equality began to exist. Yet it is both sensible and true to say that Shakespeare's Hamlet came into existence about 1600, has continued to exist, in the manner already suggested, since that date and may cease to exist.14 The comparison with the type-token distinction in the use of "word" is less misleading. Words in the type sense have a beginning, a history and sometimes a decease—they become obsolete. Nor do they characterize or relate. For the sense of "the" in which there is only one word THE in the English language—the type word—does not characterize the token "the", which has just been printed, as does, e.g., blackness. But the function of this, and every similar token, is to present the type-word. Tokens of the same type are related by similarity plus a convention which associates certain noises with certain marks as being of the "same" word. So, too, the performances of Hamlet or the Ninth Symphony are of those works if they resemble each other in certain fundamental respects. They will also differ, but if
14 Cf. Warren and Welleck, [sic; "Wellek"] Theory of Literature, London, 1949. p. 154.
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too eccentric they will be excluded from those which present these works. Perhaps the chief difference between "work of art" in this sense and "word" is that individual presentations of a work of art may have their own independent artistic value, while token-words do not fulfil independent grammatical and stylistic functions. The performance of a great actor or violinist may be a work of art in its own right, apart from being yet another verson of Hamlet or the Brahms Concerto, for acting and musical execution are also arts.
That a distinction must be made between some works of art and their manifestations may have led some aesthetic philosophers, especially those chiefly interested in literature, into bad metaphysics. For this looks like a distinction between two kinds of objects. Then it is tempting to construe a work of art as type as something above or behind its perceptible token occurrences, e.g., a platonic Idea, a Norm15, a private mental state. Or, alternatively, with the phenomenalists, to identify the work with the set of its occurrences. Neither alternative will do. For by the ordinary use of the term "literature" or "music" the ultimate test of whether works of these arts exist is sensory observation and not introspection or super-sensuous intuition. But neither did Shakespeare and Beethoven produce, nor do we see and hear, a class of occurrences when enjoying a play or symphony. The solution is to emphasize that because a word has two uses it does not follow that it is used for two different objects. "Work of art" is just used ambiguously in the manner described without implying any expansion or contraction of the universe.
As for the process of making or creating a work of art, I have suggested, somewhat crudely, that in some arts this is more physically laborious than in others. I wanted to show that there might be an excuse for saying that some composition, e.g., in literature and music, is internal. That it occurs "in the mind" or "in imagination". I have said that this may sometimes happen. I also think that whether it happens or not is an unimportant accident. What
15 Warren and Welleck, loc. cit., p. 154
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is done "in the head" could have been done as well on paper, vocally or with a musical instrument. There is, however, a more fundamental answer to idealist and subjectivist conclusions drawn from the peculiarities of these arts. I have said that one cannot separate the making of a work of the plastic arts from the skillful handling of physical materials. There seem to be no comparable public materials and exhibitions of skill in literature and music. One may always watch a person painting, drawing, sculpting; one may not, even in his presence, be able to observe that someone is composing a novel or symphony. Hence aesthetic philosophers have supposed that musicians and authors, and, more particularly authors16 use more refined methods and materials to produce their aetherial works. The fact of occasional unrecorded composition is used to support this view. Authors are conceived to compose, like spiders, by each spinning his web of private fancies from his Imagination. These may then, if their author so chooses, be externalized, by an almost mechanical operation, in written or spoken words, for public appraisal. But this is a totally misleading picture. There is one physical element common to both literature and music, which is sound. Works of both arts are manifested in audible performances. But the sounds in literature are not mere physical noises but words of a particular language. The material with which the literary artist creates is certainly not crude physical sound, comparable to stone, marble or paint, but neither is is private fancies or images. What a English writer uses is the English language. I shall not discuss whether this is part of the physical world, but it is certainly not a private invention by an individual. A writer inherits his native language as the independent, public system of words and meanings of the society into which he is born. He absorbs and accepts it perhaps even more completely than the plastic artist receives his materials from nature. It is in this system that he learns to prattle, discourse and finally to
16 I have considered literature and music together as in many ways similar and different from the plastic arts. But this is not general. Indeed, most aesthetic philosophers ignore music.
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create. If he is a good writer he may slightly modify the system; he will do that with the material which has not been done before. If he is a great writer, such as Shakespeare, appearing at the right historical moment, he may effect a major transformation, leaving his successors an incomparably more powerful and delicate instrument. Still, it will be the English language, not the language of Shakespeare. Not even the greatest literary genius creates an entirely new language. The work of a literary artist is thus a construction of words, the words of an established language most of which are in common use and all of which may be understoof by others and adopted into the language [[sic; perhaps a missing period here]] His labour is
"the intolerable wrestle17
With words and meanings"which are public, not private, and where
"Words strain18
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still".I said that whether some literary composition was unrecorded was unimmportant and did not support idealist conclusions. The reason should now be clear. If what is done, externally or internally, audibly or silently, is literary composition, it will be a construction from the words of an established language. For this what we mean [[sic]] by the term "literary composition". But if all that happens is the passage of a series of private images, feelings or symbols, this is not literary composition nor its result a work of art.
Much of this applies also to music. The material of the composer, too, is not mere physical sound or noise. Nor is it sounds used with the rules of significance which makes language a medium of communication about all topics. Musical sounds are notes of a scale and musical composition the arrangement of such notes according to further con-
17 T.S. Eliot. The Four Quartets : East Coker, Sec. 2.
18 Loc. cit. Burnt Norton, Sec. 5.
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ventions of melody, harmony and the like which are common to a musical community19. These the composer finds and accepts as the writer accepts his native language. Like language, too, they change and develop and may even be revolutionised by great composers but are never entirely superseded. No more than literature is music a series of private feelings, sensations, images; it is a structure of sounds ordered by common conventions and addressed to a suitably trained audience. As with literature, composition, whether external or internal, must follow this pattern if it is to be correctly termed "musical composition" and its result a musical work.
I have tried to show that the aesthetic theories of Croce, Collingwood, Sartre and other idealists who equate works of art with works of imagination and these with what is mentally or physically unreal do not satisfactorily elucidate our use of the term "work of art". They confuse the indubitable fact that in composing a work of art an artist may imagine more than he now perceives or can remember, with the admission of imaginary objects and fictitious entities. The Tempest is a work of imagination, it shows great imaginative and creative power, but it is certainly not an imaginary or fictitious object. Shakespeare's play is as real as its author. True, it "contains" or is "about" imaginary objects, Prospero, Caliban, Ariel, a magic island. These require other treatment. I will say here only that their logical status differs from that of the work of art, for it is very obvious that we talk of them differently.
In rebutting the errors of the idealist, however, one must avoid the contrary, realist exaggeration of, e.g., Samuel Alexander. Alexander held20 that a work of art reveals an object already present in the material from which it is produced. The sculptor does not create a new figure by chipping his marble but discovers one already hidden there.
19 Cf. E. Hanslick. The Beautiful in Music, pp. 144-145.
20 Beauty and Other Forms of Value, Ch. 4. This is one mood. In another he calls the work of art not a "discovery" but an "illusion" (Ch. 3) and cf. Mr. Ziff, loc. cit. Alexander is a good example of the many "pulls" on a sensitive philosopher of art. He was aware of many sides to aesthetic problems.
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(Michael Angelo made a similar remark about his own work, though he did not explain exactly what he meant by it.) So, "Shakespeare discovered Hamlet in the English language as the sculptor discovers his figure in the block"21 Certainly, Shakespeare found in the English language the words with which he presented Hamlet and Michael Angelo successfully carved his statues from their blocks. What more than this is said when artists are said to "find" these works in their materials? Alexander also appeals to the well-known fact that artists are often surprised by their own work which sometimes develops, almost against their will, with what seems to be an independent life22. They sometimes describe this as being "inspired". This may be true, but cannot entail the existence of statues in uncarved stone, pictures in tubes of paint and literary masterpieces in ordinary conversation. Alexander suggests no independent test to check such hidden beauties. Also, it is absurd to imply that a statue by Michael Angelo or a play by Shakespeare might have been "found" by other searchers. Alexander admits that only these artists could have made their discoveries but likens this to the fact that the genius of Newton was needed to discover the law of gravitation. But the difference is that even if the law would not have been discovered, or not so soon, without Newton, it can now be confirmed, as an impersonal truth about the world, by any competent investigator. It is nonsense to talk of a work of art being so confirmed. How would one, on this view, set about to "verify" Hamlet? Look and see whether its words occur earlier? Some will and perhaps some will not, but even if all are they will not constitute Hamlet, though the play be subsequently composed of the same words. Look for real incidents and characters corresponding to those of the play? Even if they exist the play is not a record of them and that they generally do not quite irrelevant to its merit. [[sic!]] Or notice that people in real life love, hate, procrastinate, suffer disaster as do those of
21 Loc. cit., p. 73.
22 Cf. on this point Dr. Waismann, Analytic-Synthetic VI. Analysis, Vol. 13, pp. 86-87.
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the play? But it would be odd to say that Shakespeare discovered these facts as Newton discovered a natural law. Newton's discovery, like that of any scientist was news. No-one knew this law before Newton's formulation. Nor did they know of oxygen before Priestley or electricity before Faraday. But facts of human nature and life relevant to certain works of art have been known since human beings began. The themes of great art are notoriously hackneyed. No-one is better informed about the world after attending King Lear or The Marriage of Figaro as he is after studying the Origin of Species or Snodgrass on Sound. Yet every generation may be sustained by great artists of the past while their scientific compeers, once their news has been digested, become of merely historical interest. Some will say that though artists may not inform they may give valuable insights into affairs. They may "show" what cannot be said or even what has been said but less effectively. I think this may be so and that it differs from giving factual information. I doubt if it can occur in all arts. Like any representationalist view, it will melt and finally evaporate with pottery, architecture and music. Alexander, and others, may contend that great music reflects "the great goings-on of nature and of human affairs23" but this is pointless without clearer accounts than have been given of how pure music and these affairs are related. Beethoven's last quartets may reveal profound truths about the universe. Unfortunately, those who think so do not agree upon what they are. Is this because Beethoven is much more obscure than, say, Kant? Not at all. The difficulty is that there are no accepted semantic rules connecting musical notation and ordinary language. The relation between them is not like that between English and Chinese. To translate from English to Chinese and vice versa is tricky. The translator must constantly consider "does this work or this construction really mean the same as that?" To translate from music into language is different. It is not a question of wondering whether this note or that melody mean the same as this
23 Loc. cit., p. 147.
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word or phrase but of whether notes and musical constructions have any internal relations similar to those of ostensive and verbal definition and syntactical rules in language which would facilitate translation. So far, descriptive (as distinct from technical) terms applied to music appear highly subjective and arbitrary. Music is termed "sad", "witty", "gay", "solemn", etc., but upon what grounds and whether upon the same or the same set of grounds in more than one instance is never very clear. And to attempt to expound a theory or conduct an argument by musical quartet or symphony seems quite absurd. True, it is equally unsatisfactory to many music lovers to treat music as a completely closed sysyem. Perhaps there is an approach between those of Helen and Tibby Schlegel24 which should be explored.
I question, then, the emphasis of this view that a work of art is simply a way of discovering what already exists either in the artist's materials or in the affairs of nature and human beings. Alexander's realism, though a useful corrective to some forms of idealism, over-stresses the passivity of the artist. He may explore and record but he does so as an artist only so far as he makes a new object. Of course he thereby shows the capacities of a material; that is analytic; and he may show more but his justification as an artist is the created object. If this is satisfactory, he is justified, though he made it for fun and it serves no other purpose than to delight. No doubt there is a gossamer thread which links The Hunting of the Snark with the dull world but its value is in what detaches it from everything but its author's invention25. This is an extreme example of fantasy but every work of art resembles it to some degree as a composition from elements chosen by its creator. Or if not deliberately chosen, at least not determined by external fact. Even "inspired" composition is active construction, not passive perception. To make a work of art is to do not merely to learn something. So the picture of the work of
24 E.M. Forster. Howards End, Ch. 5.
25 This may be rash with so many psychologists, sociologists and others on the prowl for ulterior meanings but the unsophisticated reader cares for none of them when reading the "Snark".
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art as a public object constructed in perceptible materials and sometimes connected more or less directly with natural facts must be balanced by that of an individual creation of elements whose relationships may be controlled by nothing except perhaps the laws of logic and a few necessary rules such as that no two colours can be in the same place which not even a surrealist painter can escape. Works of art are public objects and personal creations; they may show up life and be fantastically unlike it; they are done from choice yet are sometimes forced as from one "possessed" or subconsciously driven; their value is intrinsic yet they may have profound social effects. These are some of the factors which enter into the complex use of the term "work of art". Their separation leads to the distorted theories of traditional aesthetics. Modern linguistic aesthetics tries to describe, not explain, the complex language of art and criticism.
I have space only for a few notes on what I earlier called the narrower doctrine of Imagination in poetry represented by Coleridge and the romantic school of English literary criticism. It seems clear that the exponents of this doctrine were, at least partly, anxious to defend the creative side of art against the current, classical view that is should "imitate" certain actual or idealized natural objects and incidents. On this view a work of art is produced by copying an original and judged by its fidelity to that model. This takes little account of originality which is one of the most prized features of art. The romantic reaction was therefore, salutary. But it is difficult to see exactly what Coleridge's squabble with the associationists and his own positive doctrine of imagination amount to. It is perfectly true that not every work of art is a record of what an artist at any time perceives or remembers. Nor is it a theoretical argument, but may be a work of pure fiction or fancy. The elements of such a work but not the whole must have been previously known. Shakespeare had never met Caliban but he had met all his parts in other contexts. The question seems to be how they are connected. Coleridge denies that, at least for great art, this is by "associating" one item with another, which has been formerly conjoined
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with it, according to the principles of Hume and Hartley. Instead, men, and especially great artists, have in their Imaginations a unique power of uniting such parts into "organic" wholes some of which are works of art. Associating does occur in yet another faculty which Coleridge calls Fancy. At least one supposes that it is a different faculty since its laws are "mechanical" and so, presumably, of a different logical type from those of the Imagination which are "organic." Ordinarily, of course, such words as "fanciful" and "imaginative" are used for qualities which differ in degree rather than kind. To a modern philosopher this whole dispute seems verbal and emotive, not factual. Coleridge does not even attempt to cite any serious empirical evidence of a unique "esemplastic power" of Imagination or even, for that matter, of an entity named by "Imagination". Of course, he cannot be blamed. He was submerged by Kant who is no better in this respect than his pupil. Like other traditional philosophers, Kant gives no new information but provides an alternative "language", with different emphases, for presenting the facts already known to common sense and science. He did not reveal that the mind has mysterious innate powers of synthesis (it may have, but to prove this would need facts of the sort which confirm any scientific hypothesis), but he did remind us emphatically that we assert analytic and synthetic a priori propositions. Hume knew this, too, but he chose to subordinate such propositions to those he thought more important, empirical generalizations. The choice between such systems is not that one is more enlightening, but that it present an attractive alternative "picture" to the other. One important, philsophical difference between, say, Hume and Kant; Bentham and Coleridge26, is that they have and appeal to different temperaments. A connoisseur will try them all.
So with Coleridge and the associationists. Of course, there is an observable difference between a situation in which, e.g., hearing a certain tune makes me recall Paris and that in which the facts of The Road to Xanadu27 became The
26 Cf. J.S. Mull, Essays on Bentham and Coleridge, ed. F.R. Leavis
27 By J.L. Lowes.
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Ancient Mariner. Hume will say that both are instances of the associating of previously experienced items by contiguity, resemblance and cause and effect, but the first is simple and trifling and the second complex, systematic and important. The difference is one of degree. Coleridge affirms that the second differs in kind, being due to a mental activity which unifies parts into a whole which differs from their mere juxtaposition and so results in a new creation. If either of these explanations is to be more than a reformulation of the original, admitted difference, its author must suggest further, independent empirical verification of his hypothesis. Neither does so. One would have supposed that Coleridge could have done this. That he could have described the "esemplastic power" working on the materials of his reading to produce The Ancient Mariner and so have vindicated his thesis and saved his successors a lot of trouble. Since he did not, one must conclude that a choice between these disputants is not by proof by preference. Indeed, Coleridge's real objection to associationism is not that is it false but that it gives a "mechanical" picture of the mind and art. Like many others, he preferred the "organic" to the "mechanical" picture. He chose to stress the similarit between works of art and living creatures (and there is some likeness, conception and birth are, perhaps, paradigms of artistic creation). But "organic" is not descriptive and informative in this context any more than is "mechanical". For works of art are neither machines nor organisms. They are works of art.
I have reiterated these platitudes because it seemed worth while to try to translate Coleridge into modern philosophical idiom, however sketchily, to see what his doctrine amounts to, since he has had great influence in certain circles. But I doubt if either his approach or that of his opponents in this dispute is aesthetically useful. When one says of a work that it is "imaginative", "creative", "original", "fanciful" and the like one is not referring to the mental process by which it was produced. Nor does one justify the application of these terms according to whether an artist "merely associated" or employed an
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"esemplastic power". One justifies their application by the qualities of the work. No doubt there is an important psycho-physical problem of how artists create. Since the time of Coleridge the "esemplastic power" has moved downwards into the unconscious and may yet move outwards into the brain cells but this is not an aesthetic problem and is irrelevant to the use of critical terms in art.
When Coleridge distinguishes fancy and imagination he does, in fact, appeal to examples. He contrasts Milton as imaginative with Cowley as a fanciful writer: Otway's fanciful
"Lutes, laurels, seas of mulk and ships of amber"
with Shakespeare's imaginative
"What! have his daughters brought him to this pass"28
and others. He would not consider himself refuted by any author's introspections about his mental states. This is true of all critical terms, whose meaning is in their use. They are verified in the works to which they are applied which are, as already shown, external objects, not mental state. Coleridge's value to aesthetics is as a great literary critic who may clarify old and introduce new critical terms by exemplary methods. In this he helps to impose the standard uses of such terms which aesthetic philosophers or meta-critics29 accept for their own elucidatory purposes.
Another problem for some theorists is the relation between art and truth on the romantic view. If a work of art as a work of imagination differs from what is given to sense perception (without art) and what is rationally deduced, what is it "about", how is it related to what is true and exists? "The imagination", said Keats, "may be compared to Adam's Dream—he awoke and found it truth"30, and "What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth"31. These are obscure remarks. In one sense what is imagined constantly becomes true or real. A poet, e.g., may imagine or "have an idea for" a poem and then
28 Biographia Literaria, Ch. 4
29 Not superior critics, but those whose talk is about critics' talk.
30 Letters, ed. Forman. No. 31. Cf also Paradise Lost, VIII, 460-90.
31 Ibid.
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compose one and a poem is perfectly real. He creates, brings into existence, what he has imagined. There is no mystery about this. But no doubt Keats thought he meant more. What he, and others of similar views, may have meant about knowledge or intimations of natural and supra-natural facts may be studied in works already cited by Prof. D.G. James and Prof. R.L. Brett, and others. I wish only to make this point. It makes sense to say I perceive what is veridical or illusory; remember correctly or incorrectly; reason consistently or inconsistently; assert truly or falsely. All these are cognitive or knowledge verbs. Their use implies rules which may be observed or infringed; ways of being right or wrong. But it seems absurd to say I imagine or create veridically or illusorily, correctly or incorrectly, consistently or inconsistently, truly or falsely. Prof. Ryle has observed that one cannot say, "I am imagining something but I don't know in the least what sort of thing it is"32. It would also be queer to say, "I am making something but I have no idea what it is". The response would surely be "Then you are not making anything but just playing about with material". If it is nonsense to say that I do not know what I imagine or create then it is equally nonsense to say that I know it. Imagining and creating maybe successful or unsuccessful ("I tried to imagine a battlefield, but failed"; "I tried to write a novel but found it impossible"), but cannot as such be right or wrong, inform or mislead. Imagining and creating are thus not superior or inferior ways of knowing to perceiving, remembering and reasoning for they are not ways of knowing at all. They are ways of doing something. They may sometimes help one to come to know. Hypotheses, theories, diagrams show how useful it is to imagine how facts may be before confirming by perception how they are. But a confirmed theory is not known to be true by the imagination which originally created it but by perception.
32 The Concept of Mind, Ch. 8, p. 265.