Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic by Benedetto Croce

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[Sidenote] _Identity of taste and genius._

It is clear from the preceding theorem, that the judicial activity,
which criticizes and recognizes the beautiful, is identical with that
which produces it. The only difference lies in the diversity of
circumstances, since in the one case it is a question of aesthetic
production, in the other of reproduction. The judicial activity is
called _taste_; the productive activity is called _genius_: genius and
taste are therefore substantially _identical_.

The common remark, that the critic should possess some of the genius of
the artist and that the artist should possess taste, reveals a glimpse
of this identity; or that there exists an active (productive) taste and
a passive (reproductive) taste. But a denial of this is contained in
other equally common remarks, as when people speak of taste without
genius, or of genius without taste. These last observations are
meaningless, unless they be taken as alluding to quantitative
differences. In this case, those would be called geniuses without taste
who produce works of art, inspired in their culminating parts and
neglected and defective in their secondary parts, and those men of taste
without genius, who succeed in obtaining certain isolated or secondary
effects, but do not possess the power necessary for a vast artistic
synthesis. Analogous explanations can easily be given of other similar
propositions. But to posit a substantial difference between genius and
taste, between artistic production and reproduction, would render
communication and judgment alike inconceivable. How could we judge what
remained extraneous to us? How could that which is produced by a given
activity be judged by a different activity? The critic will be a small
genius, the artist a great genius; the one will have the strength of
ten, the other of a hundred; the former, in order to raise himself to
the altitude of the latter, will have need of his assistance; but the
nature of both must be the same. In order to judge Dante, we must raise
ourselves to his level: let it be well understood that empirically we
are not Dante, nor Dante we; but in that moment of judgment and
contemplation, our spirit is one with that of the poet, and in that
moment we and he are one single thing. In this identity alone resides
the possibility that our little souls can unite with the great souls,
and become great with them, in the universality of the spirit.

[Sidenote] _Analogy with the other activities._

Let us remark in passing that what has been said of the aesthetic
_judgment_ holds good equally for every other activity and for every
other judgment; and that scientific, economic, and ethical criticism is
effected in a like manner. To limit ourselves to this last, it is only
if we place ourselves ideally in the same conditions in which he who
took a given resolution found himself, that we can form a judgment as to
whether his resolution were moral or immoral. An action would otherwise
remain incomprehensible, and therefore impossible to judge. A homicide
may be a rascal or a hero: if this be, within limits, indifferent as
regards the safety of society, which condemns both to the same
punishment, it is not indifferent to him who wishes to distinguish and
to judge from the moral point of view, and we cannot dispense with
studying again the individual psychology of the homicide, in order to
determine the true nature of his deed, not merely in its judicial, but
also in its moral aspect. In Ethic, a moral taste or tact is sometimes
referred to, which answers to what is generally called moral conscience,
that is to say, to the activity itself of good-will.

[Sidenote] _Critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of aesthetic
relativism._

The explanation above given of aesthetic judgment or reproduction at
once affirms and denies the position of the absolutists and relativists,
of those, that is to say, who affirm and of those who deny the existence
of an absolute taste.

The absolutists, who affirm that they can judge of the beautiful, are
right; but the theory on which they found their affirmation is not
maintainable. They conceive of the beautiful, that is, of aesthetic
value, as of something placed outside the aesthetic activity; as if it
were a model or a concept which an artist realizes in his work, and of
which the critic avails himself afterwards in order to judge the work
itself. Concepts and models alike have no existence in art, for by
proclaiming that every art can be judged only in itself, and has its own
model in itself, they have attained to the denial of the existence of
objective models of beauty, whether they be intellectual concepts, or
ideas suspended in the metaphysical sky.

In proclaiming this, the adversaries, the relativists, are perfectly
right, and accomplish a progress. However, the initial rationality of
their thesis becomes in its turn a false theory. Repeating the old adage
that there is no accounting for tastes, they believe that aesthetic
expression is of the same nature as the pleasant and the unpleasant,
which every one feels in his own way, and as to which there is no
disputing. But we know that the pleasant and the unpleasant are
utilitarian and practical facts. Thus the relativists deny the
peculiarity of the aesthetic fact, again confounding expression with
impression, the theoretic with the practical.

The true solution lies in rejecting alike relativism or psychologism,
and false absolutism; and in recognizing that the criterion of taste is
absolute, but absolute in a different way from that of the intellect,
which is developed by reason. The criterion of taste is absolute, with
the intuitive absoluteness of the imagination. Thus every act of
expressive activity, which is so really, will be recognized as
beautiful, and every fact in which expressive activity and passivity are
found engaged with one another in an unfinished struggle, will be
recognized as ugly.

[Sidenote] _Critique of relative relativism._

There lies, between absolutists and relativists, a third class, which
may be called that of the relative relativists. These affirm the
existence of absolute values in other fields, such as Logic and Ethic,
but deny their existence in the field of Aesthetic. To them it appears
natural and justifiable to dispute about science and morality; because
science rests on the universal, common to all men, and morality on duty,
which is also a law of human nature; but how, they say, can one dispute
about art, which rests on imagination? Not only, however, is the
imaginative activity universal and belongs to human nature, like the
logical concept and practical duty; but we must oppose a capital
objection to this intermediary thesis. If the absolute nature of the
imagination were denied, we should be obliged to deny also that of
intellectual or conceptual truth, and, implicitly, of morality. Does not
morality presuppose logical distinctions? How could these be known,
otherwise than by expressions and words, that is to say, in imaginative
form? If the absoluteness of the imagination were removed, spiritual
life would tremble to its base. One individual would no longer
understand another, nor indeed his own self of a moment before, which,
when considered a moment after, is already another individual.

[Sidenote] _Objection founded on the variation of the stimulus and
on the psychic disposition._

Nevertheless, variety of judgments is an indisputable fact. Men are at
variance in their logical, ethical, and economical appreciations; and
they are equally, or even more at variance in their aesthetic
appreciations. If certain reasons detailed by us, above, such as haste,
prejudices, passions, etc., may be held to lessen the importance of this
disagreement, they do not thereby annul it. We have been cautious, when
speaking of the stimuli of reproduction, for we said that reproduction
takes place, _if all the other conditions remain equal_. Do they remain
equal? Does the hypothesis correspond to reality?

It would appear not. In order to reproduce several times an impression
by employing a suitable physical stimulus, it is necessary that this
stimulus be not changed, and that the organism remain in the same
psychical conditions as those in which was experienced the impression
that it is desired to reproduce. Now it is a fact, that the physical
stimulus is continually changing, and in like manner the psychological
conditions.

Oil paintings grow dark, frescoes pale, statues lose noses, hands, and
legs, architecture becomes totally or partially a ruin, the tradition of
the execution of a piece of music is lost, the text of a poem is
corrupted by bad copyists or bad printing. These are obvious instances
of the changes which daily occur in objects or physical stimuli. As
regards psychological conditions, we will not dwell upon the cases of
deafness or blindness, that is to say, upon the loss of entire orders of
psychical impressions; these cases are secondary and of less importance
compared with the fundamental, daily, inevitable, and perpetual changes
of the society around us, and of the internal conditions of our
individual life. The phonic manifestations, that is, the words and
verses of the Dantesque _Commedia_, must produce a very different
impression on a citizen engaged in the politics of the third Rome, to
that experienced by a well-informed and intimate contemporary of the
poet. The Madonna of Cimabue is still in the Church of Santa Maria
Novella; but does she speak to the visitor of to-day as she spoke to the
Florentines of the thirteenth century? Even though she were not also
darkened by time, would not the impression be altogether different? And
finally, how can a poem composed in youth make the same impression on
the same individual poet when he re-reads it in his old age, with his
psychic dispositions altogether changed?

[Sidenote] _Critique of the division of signs into natural and
conventional._

It is true, that certain aestheticians have attempted a distinction
between stimuli and stimuli, between _natural and conventional_ signs.
They would grant to the former a constant effect on all; to the latter,
only on a limited circle. In their belief, signs employed in painting
are natural, while the words of poetry are conventional. But the
difference between the one and the other is only of degree. It has often
been affirmed that painting is a language which all understand, while
with poetry it is otherwise. Here, for example, Leonardo placed one of
the prerogatives of his art, "which hath not need of interpreters of
different languages as have letters," and in it man and brute find
satisfaction. He relates the anecdote of that portrait of the father of
a family, "which the little grandchildren were wont to caress while they
were still in swaddling-clothes, and the dogs and cats of the house in
like manner." But other anecdotes, such as those of the savages who took
the portrait of a soldier for a boat, or considered the portrait of a
man on horseback as furnished with only one leg, are apt to shake one's
faith in the understanding of painting by sucklings, dogs, and cats.
Fortunately, no arduous researches are necessary to convince oneself
that pictures, poetry, and every work of art, produce no effects save on
souls prepared to receive them. Natural signs do not exist; because they
are all conventional in a like manner, or, to speak with greater
exactitude, all are _historically conditioned_.

[Sidenote] _The surmounting of variety._

This being so, how are we to succeed in causing the expression to be
reproduced by means of the physical object? How obtain the same effect,
when the conditions are no longer the same? Would it not, rather, seem
necessary to conclude that expressions cannot be reproduced, despite the
physical instruments made by man for the purpose, and that what is
called reproduction consists in ever new expressions? Such would indeed
be the conclusion, if the variety of physical and psychic conditions
were intrinsically unsurmountable. But since the insuperability has none
of the characteristics of necessity, we must, on the contrary, conclude:
that the reproduction always occurs, when we can replace ourselves in
the conditions in which the stimulus (physical beauty) was produced.

Not only can we replace ourselves in these conditions, as an abstract
possibility, but as a matter of fact we do so continually. Individual
life, which is communion with ourselves (with our past), and social
life, which is communion with our like, would not otherwise be possible.

[Sidenote] _Restorations and historical interpretation._

As regards the physical object, paleographers and philologists, who
_restore_ to texts their original physiognomy, _restorers_ of pictures
and of statues, and similar categories of workers, exert themselves to
preserve or to give back to the physical object all its primitive
energy. These efforts certainly do not always succeed, or are not
completely successful, for never, or hardly ever, is it possible to
obtain a restoration complete in its smallest details. But the
unsurmountable is only accidentally present, and cannot cause us to fail
to recognize the favourable results which are nevertheless obtained.

_Historical interpretation_ likewise labours to reintegrate in us
historical conditions which have been altered in the course of history.
It revives the dead, completes the fragmentary, and affords us the
opportunity of seeing a work of art (a physical object) as its author
saw it, at the moment of production.

A condition of this historical labour is tradition, with the help of
which it is possible to collect the scattered rays and cause them to
converge on one centre. With the help of memory, we surround the
physical stimulus with all the facts among which it arose; and thus we
make it possible for it to react upon us, as it acted upon him who
produced it.

When the tradition is broken, interpretation is arrested; in this case,
the products of the past remain _silent_ for us. Thus the expressions
contained in the Etruscan or Messapian inscriptions are unattainable;
thus we still hear discussions among ethnographers as to certain
products of the art of savages, whether they be pictures or writings;
thus archaeologists and prehistorians are not always able to establish
with certainty, whether the figures found on the ceramic of a certain
region, and on other instruments employed, be of a religious or of a
profane nature. But the arrest of interpretation, as that of
restoration, is never a definitely unsurmountable barrier; and the daily
discoveries of historical sources and of new methods of better
exploiting antiquity, which we may hope to see ever improving, link up
broken tradition.

We do not wish to deny that erroneous historical interpretation produces
at times what we may term _palimpsests_, new expressions imposed upon
the antique, artistic imaginings instead of historical reproductions.
The so-called fascination of the past depends in part upon these
expressions of ours, which we weave into historical expressions. Thus in
hellenic plastic art has been discovered the calm and serene intuition
of life of those peoples, who feel, nevertheless, so poignantly, the
universality of sorrow; thus has recently been discerned on the faces of
the Byzantine saints "the terror of the millennium," a terror which is
an equivoke, or an artificial legend invented by modern scholars. But
_historical criticism_ tends precisely to circumscribe _vain imaginings_
and to establish with exactitude the point of view from which we must
look.

Thus we live in communication with other men of the present and of the
past; and we must not conclude, because sometimes, and indeed often, we
find ourselves face to face with the unknown or the badly known, that
when we believe we are engaged in a dialogue, we are always speaking a
monologue; nor that we are unable even to repeat the monologue which, in
the past, we held with ourselves.

XVII

THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND ART

[Sidenote] _Historical criticism in literature and art. Its
importance._

This brief exposition of the method by which is obtained reintegration
of the original conditions in which the work of art was produced, and by
which reproduction and judgment are made possible, shows how important
is the function fulfilled by historical research concerning artistic and
literary works; that is to say, by what is usually called _historical
criticism_, or method, in literature and art.

Without tradition and historical criticism, the enjoyment of all or
nearly all works of art produced by humanity, would be irrevocably lost:
we should be little more than animals, immersed in the present alone, or
in the most recent past. Only fools despise and laugh at him who
reconstitutes an authentic text, explains the sense of words and
customs, investigates the conditions in which an artist lived, and
accomplishes all those labours which revive the qualities and the
original colouring of works of art.

Sometimes the depreciatory or negative judgment refers to the presumed
or proved uselessness of many researches, made to recover the correct
meaning of artistic works. But, it must be observed, in the first place,
that historical research does not only fulfil the task of helping to
reproduce and judge artistic works: the biography of a writer or of an
artist, for example, and the study of the costume of a period, also
possess their own interest, foreign to the history of art, but not
foreign to other forms of history. If allusion be made to those
researches which do not appear to have interest of any kind, nor to
fulfil any purpose, it must be replied that the historical student must
often reconcile himself to the useful, but little glorious, office of a
cataloguer of facts. These facts remain for the time being formless,
incoherent, and insignificant, but they are preserves, or mines, for the
historian of the future and for whomsoever may afterwards want them for
any purpose. In the same way, books which nobody asks for are placed on
the shelves and are noted in the catalogues, because they may be asked
for at some time or other. Certainly, in the same way that an
intelligent librarian gives the preference to the acquisition and to the
cataloguing of those books which he foresees may be of more or better
service, so do intelligent students possess the instinct as to what is
or may more probably be useful from among the mass of facts which they
are investigating. Others, on the other hand, less well-endowed, less
intelligent, or more hasty in producing, accumulate useless selections,
rejections and erasures, and lose themselves in refinements and gossipy
discussions. But this appertains to the economy of research, and is not
our affair. At the most, it is the affair of the master who selects the
subjects, of the publisher who pays for the printing, and of the critic
who is called upon to praise or to blame the students for their
researches.

On the other hand, it is evident, that historical research, directed to
illuminate a work of art by placing us in a position to judge it, does
not alone suffice to bring it to birth in our spirit: taste, and an
imagination trained and awakened, are likewise presupposed. The greatest
historical erudition may accompany a taste in part gross or defective, a
lumbering imagination, or, as it is generally phrased, a cold, hard
heart, closed to art. Which is the lesser evil?--great erudition and
defective taste, or natural good taste and great ignorance? The question
has often been asked, and perhaps it will be best to deny its
possibility, because one cannot tell which of two evils is the less, or
what exactly that means. The merely learned man never succeeds in
entering into communication with the great spirits, and keeps wandering
for ever about the outer courts, the staircases, and the antechambers of
their palaces; but the gifted ignoramus either passes by masterpieces
which are to him inaccessible, or instead of understanding the works of
art, as they really are, he invents others, with his imagination. Now,
the labour of the former may at least serve to enlighten others; but the
ingenuity of the latter remains altogether sterile. How, then, can we
fail to prefer the conscientious learned man to the inconclusive man of
talent, who is not really talented, if he resign himself, and in so far
as he resigns himself, to come to no conclusion?

[Sidenote] _Literary and artistic history. Its distinction from
historical criticism and from artistic judgement._

It is necessary to distinguish accurately _the history, of art and
literature_ from those historical labours which make use of works of
art, but for extraneous purposes (such as biography, civil, religious,
and political history, etc.), and also from historical erudition, whose
object is preparation for the Aesthetic synthesis of reproduction.

The difference between the first of these is obvious. The history of art
and literature has the works of art themselves for principal subject;
the other branches of study call upon and interrogate works of art, but
only as witnesses, from which to discover the truth of facts which are
not aesthetic. The second difference to which we have referred may seem
less profound. However, it is very great. Erudition devoted to rendering
clear again the understanding of works of art, aims simply at making
appear a certain internal fact, an aesthetic reproduction. Artistic and
literary history, on the other hand, does not appear until such
reproduction has been obtained. It demands, therefore, further labour.
Like all other history, its object is to record precisely such facts as
have really taken place, that is, artistic and literary facts. A man
who, after having acquired the requisite historical erudition,
reproduces in himself and tastes a work of art, may remain simply a man
of taste, or express at the most his own feeling, with an exclamation of
beautiful or ugly. This does not suffice for the making of a historian
of literature and art. There is further need that the simple act of
reproduction be followed in him by a second internal operation. What is
this new operation? It is, in its turn, an expression: the expression of
the reproduction; the historical description, exposition, or
representation. There is this difference, then, between the man of taste
and the historian: the first merely reproduces in his spirit the work of
art; the second, after having reproduced it, represents it historically,
thus applying to it those categories by which, as we know, history is
differentiated from pure art. Artistic and literary history is,
therefore, _a historical work of art founded upon one or more works of
art_.

The denomination of artistic or literary critic is used in various
senses: sometimes it is applied to the student who devotes his services
to literature; sometimes to the historian who reveals the works of art
of the past in their reality; more often to both. By critic is sometimes
understood, in a more restricted sense, he who judges and describes
contemporary literary works; and by historian, he who is occupied with
less recent works. These are but linguistic usages and empirical
distinctions, which may be neglected; because the true difference lies
_between the learned man, the man of taste, and the historian of art_.
These words designate, as it were, three successive stages of work, of
which each is relatively independent of the one that follows, but not of
that which precedes. As we have seen, a man may be simply learned, yet
possess little capacity for understanding works of art; he may indeed be
both learned and possess taste, yet be unable to write a page of
artistic and literary history. But the true and complete historian,
while containing in himself, as necessary pre-requisites, both the
learned man and the man of taste, must add to their qualities the gift
of historical comprehension and representation.

[Sidenote] _The method of artistic and literary history._

The method of artistic and literary history presents problems and
difficulties, some common to all historical method, others peculiar to
it, because they derive from the concept of art itself.

[Sidenote] _Critique of the problem of the origin of art._

History is wont to be divided into the history of man, the history or
nature, and the mixed history of both the preceding. Without examining
here the question of the solidity of this division, it is clear that
artistic and literary history belongs in any case to the first, since it
concerns a spiritual activity, that is to say, an activity proper to
man. And since this activity is its subject, the absurdity of
propounding the historical _problem of the origin of art_ becomes at
once evident. We should note that by this formula many different things
have in turn been included on many different occasions. _Origin_ has
often meant _nature_ or _disposition_ of the artistic fact, and here was
a real scientific or philosophic problem, the very problem, in fact,
which our treatise has tried to solve. At other times, by origin has
been understood the ideal genesis, the search for the reason of art, the
deduction of the artistic fact from a first principle containing in
itself both spirit and nature. This is also a philosophical problem, and
it is complementary to the preceding, indeed it coincides with it,
though it has sometimes been strangely interpreted and solved by means
of an arbitrary and semi-fantastic metaphysic. But when it has been
sought to discover further exactly in what way the artistic function was
_historically formed_, this has resulted in the absurdity to which we
have referred. If expression be the first form of consciousness, how can
the historical origin be sought of what is _presupposed_ not to be a
product of nature and of human history? How can we find the historical
genesis of that which is a category, by means of which every historical
genesis and fact are understood? The absurdity has arisen from the
comparison with human institutions, which have, in fact, been formed in
the course of history, and which have disappeared or may disappear in
its course. There exists between the aesthetic fact and a human
institution (such as monogamic marriage or the fief) a difference to
some extent comparable with that between simple and compound bodies in
chemistry. It is impossible to indicate the formation of the former,
otherwise they would not be simple, and if this be discovered, they
cease to be simple and become compound.

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