Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic by Benedetto Croce

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These mistakes of mystical Aesthetic were manifested during the Romantic
period in some celebrated paradoxes, such as those of _art as irony_ and
of the _death of art_. They seemed calculated to drive philosophers to
desperation as to the possibility of solving the problem of the nature
of art, since every path of solution appeared closed. Indeed, whoever
reads the aestheticians of the romantic period, feels strongly inclined
to believe himself at the heart of the enquiry and to nourish a
confident hope of immediate discovery of the truth. Above all, the
affirmation of the theoretic nature of art, and of the difference
between its cognitive method and that of science and of logic, is felt
as a definite conquest, which can indeed be combined with other
elements, but which must not in any case be allowed to slip between the
fingers. And further, it is not true that all ways of solution are
closed, or that all have been attempted. There is at least one still
open that can be tried; and it is precisely that for which we resolutely
declare ourselves: the Aesthetic of the pure intuition.

This Aesthetic reasons as follows:--Hitherto, in all attempts to define
the place of art, it has been sought, either at the summit of the
theoretic spirit, above philosophy, or, at least, in the circle of
philosophy itself. But is not the loftiness of the search the reason why
no satisfactory result has hitherto been obtained? Why not invert the
attempt, and instead of forming the hypothesis that art is _one of the
summits or the highest grade_ of the theoretic spirit, form the very
opposite hypothesis, namely, that it is _one of the lower grades_, or
the lowest of all? Perhaps such epithets as "lower" and "lowest" are
irreconcilable with the dignity and with the splendid beauty of art? But
in the philosophy of the spirit, such words as lowest, weak, simple,
elementary, possess only the value of a scientific terminology. All the
forms of the spirit are necessary, and the higher is so only because
there is the lower, and the lower is as much to be despised or less to
be valued to the same extent as the first step of a stair is despicable,
or of less value in respect to the topmost step.

Let us compare art with the various forms of the theoretic spirit, and
let us begin with the sciences which are called _natural_ or _positive_.
The Aesthetic of pure intuition makes it clear that the said sciences
are more _complex_ than History, because they presuppose historical
material, that is, collections of things that have happened (to men or
animals, to the earth or to the stars). They submit this material to a
further treatment, which consists in the abstraction and systematization
of the historical facts. _History_, then, is less complex than the
natural sciences. History further presupposes the world of the
imagination and the pure philosophical concepts or categories, and
produces its judgments or historical propositions, by means of the
synthesis of the imagination with the concept. And _Philosophy_ may be
said to be even less complex than History, in so far as it is
distinguished from the former as an activity whose special function it
is to make clear the categories or pure concepts, neglecting, in a
certain sense at any rate, the world of phenomena. If we compare _Art_
with the three forms above mentioned, it must be declared inferior, that
is to say, less complex than the _natural Sciences_, in so far as it is
altogether without abstractions. In so far as it is without conceptual
determinations and does not distinguish between the real and the unreal,
what has really happened and what has been dreamed, it must be declared
inferior to _History_. In so far as it fails altogether to surpass the
phenomenal world, and does not attain to the definitions of the pure
concepts, it is inferior to _Philosophy_ itself. It is also inferior to
_Religion_, assuming that religion is (as it is) a form of speculative
truth, standing between thought and imagination. Art is governed
entirely by imagination; its only riches are images. Art does not
classify objects, nor pronounce them real or imaginary, nor qualify
them, nor define them. Art feels and represents them. Nothing more. Art
therefore is _intuition_, in so far as it is a mode of knowledge, not
abstract, but concrete, and in so far as it uses the real, without
changing or falsifying it. In so far as it apprehends it immediately,
before it is modified and made clear by the concept, it must be called
_pure intuition_.

The strength of art lies in being thus simple, nude, and poor. Its
strength (as often happens in life) arises from its very weakness. Hence
its fascination. If (to employ an image much used by philosophers for
various ends) we think of man, in the first moment that he becomes aware
of theoretical life, with mind still clear of every abstraction and of
every reflexion, in that first purely intuitive instant he must be a
poet. He contemplates the world with ingenuous and admiring eyes; he
sinks and loses himself altogether in that contemplation. By creating
the first representations and by thus inaugurating the life of
knowledge, art continually renews within our spirit the aspects of
things, which thought has submitted to reflexion, and the intellect to
abstraction. Thus art perpetually makes us poets again. Without art,
thought would lack the stimulus, the very material, for its hermeneutic
and critical labour. Art is the root of all our theoretic life. To be
the root, not the flower or the fruit, is the function of art. And
without a root, there can be no flower and no fruit.

II

Such is the theory of art as pure intuition, in its fundamental
conception. This theory, then, takes its origin from the criticism of
the loftiest of all the other doctrines of Aesthetic, from the criticism
of mystical or romantic Aesthetic, and contains in itself the criticism
and the truth of all the other Aesthetics. It is not here possible to
allow ourselves to illustrate its other aspects, such as would be those
of the identity, which it lays down, between intuition and expression,
between art and language. Suffice it to say, as regards the former, that
he alone who divides the unity of the spirit into soul and body can have
faith in a pure act of the soul, and therefore in an intuition, which
should exist as an intuition, and yet be without its body, expression.
Expression is the actuality of intuition, as action is of will; and in
the same way as will not exercised in action is not will, so an
intuition unexpressed is not an intuition. As regards the second point,
I will mention in passing that, in order to recognize the identity of
art and language, it is needful to study language, not in its
abstraction and in grammatical detail, but in its immediate reality, and
in all its manifestations, spoken and sung, phonic and graphic. And we
should not take at hazard any proposition, and declare it to be
aesthetic; because, if all propositions have an aesthetic side
(precisely because intuition is the elementary form of knowledge and is,
as it were, the garment of the superior and more complex forms), all are
not _purely_ aesthetic, but some are philosophical, historical,
scientific, or mathematical; some, in fact, of these are more than
aesthetic or logical; they are aestheticological. Aristotle, in his
time, distinguished between semantic and apophantic propositions, and
noted, that if all propositions be _semantic_, not all are _apophantic_.
Language is art, not in so far as it is apophantic, but in so far as it
is, generically, semantic. It is necessary to note in it the side by
which it is expressive, and nothing but expressive. It is also well to
observe (though this may seem superfluous) that it is not necessary to
reduce the theory of pure intuition, as has been sometimes done, to a
historical fact or to a psychological concept. Because we recognize in
poetry, as it were, the ingenuousness, the freshness, the barbarity of
the spirit, it is not therefore necessary to limit poetry to youth and
to barbarian peoples. Though we recognize language as the first act of
taking possession of the world achieved by man, we must not imagine that
language is born _ex nihilo_, once only in the course of the ages, and
that later generations merely adopt the ancient instrument, applying it
to a new order of things while lamenting its slight adaptability to the
usage of civilized times. Art, poetry, intuition, and immediate
expression are the moment of barbarity and of ingenuousness, which
perpetually recur in the life of the spirit; they are youth, that is,
not chronological, but ideal. There exist very prosaic barbarians and
very prosaic youths, as there exist poetical spirits of the utmost
refinement and civilization. The mythology of those proud, gigantic
Patagonians, of whom our Vico was wont to discourse, or of those _bons
Hurons_, who were lately a theme of conversation, must be looked upon as
for ever superseded.

But there arises an apparently very serious objection to the Aesthetic
of pure intuition, giving occasion to doubt whether this doctrine, if it
represent progress in respect to the doctrines which have preceded it,
yet is also a complete and definite doctrine as regards the fundamental
concept of art. Should it be submitted to a dialectic, by means of which
it must be surpassed and dissolved into a more lofty point of view? The
doctrine of pure intuition makes the value of art to consist of its
power of intuition; in such a manner that just in so far as pure and
concrete intuitions are achieved will art and beauty be achieved. But if
attention be paid to judgments of people of good taste and of critics,
and to what we all say when we are warmly discussing works of art and
manifesting our praise or blame of them, it would seem that what we seek
in art is something quite different, or at least something more than
simple force and intuitive and expressive purity. What pleases and what
is sought in art, what makes beat the heart and enraptures the
admiration, is life, movement, emotion, warmth, the feeling of the
artist. This alone affords the supreme criterion for distinguishing true
from false works of art, those with insight from the failures. Where
there are emotion and feeling, much is forgiven; where they are wanting,
nothing can make up for them. Not only are the most profound thoughts
and the most exquisite culture incapable of saving a work of art which
is looked upon as _cold_, but richness of imagery, ability and certainty
in the reproduction of the real, in description, characterization and
composition, and all other knowledge, only serve to arouse the regret
that so great a price has been paid and such labours endured, in vain.
We do not ask of an artist instruction as to real facts and thoughts,
nor that he should astonish us with the richness of his imagination, but
that he should have a _personality_, in contact with which the soul of
the hearer or spectator may be heated. A personality of any sort is
asked for in this case; its moral significance is excluded: let it be
sad or glad, enthusiastic or distrustful, sentimental or sarcastic,
benignant or malign, but it must be a soul. Art criticism would seem to
consist altogether in determining if there be a personality in the work
of art, and of what sort. A work that is a failure is an incoherent
work; that is to say, a work in which no single personality appears, but
a number of disaggregated and jostling personalities, that is, really,
none. There is no further correct significance than this in the
researches that are made as to the verisimilitude, the truth, the logic,
the necessity, of a work of art.

It is true that many protests have been made by artists, critics, and
philosophers by profession, against the characteristic of _personality_.
It has been maintained that the bad artist leaves traces of his
personality in the work of art, whereas the great artist cancels them
all. It has been further maintained that the artist should portray the
reality of life, and that he should not disturb it with the opinions,
judgments, and personal feelings of the author, and that the artist
should give the tears of things and not his own tears. Hence
_impersonality_, not personality, has been proclaimed to be the
characteristic of art, that is to say, the very opposite. However, it
will not be difficult to show that what is really meant by this opposing
formula is the same as in the first case. The theory of impersonality
really coincides with that of personality in every point. The opposition
of the artists, critics, and philosophers above mentioned, was directed
against the invasion by the empirical and volitional personality of the
artist of the spontaneous and ideal personality which constitutes the
subject of the work of art. For instance, artists who do not succeed in
representing the force of piety or of love of country, add to their
colourless imaginings declamation or theatrical effects, thinking thus
to arouse such feelings. In like manner certain orators and actors
introduce into a work of art an emotion extraneous to the work of art
itself. Within these limits, the opposition of the upholders of the
theory of impersonality was most reasonable. On the other hand, there
has also been exhibited an altogether irrational opposition to
personality in the work of art. Such is the lack of comprehension and
intolerance evinced by certain souls for others differently constituted
(of calm for agitated souls, for example).

Here we find at bottom the claim of one sort of personality to deny that
of another. Finally, it has been possible to demonstrate from among the
examples given of impersonal art, in the romances and dramas called
naturalistic, that in so far and to the extent that these are complete
artistic works, they possess personality. This holds good even when this
personality lies in a wandering or perplexity of thought regarding the
value to be given to life, or in blind faith in the natural sciences and
in modern sociology.

Where every trace of personality was really absent, and its place taken
by the pedantic quest for human documents, the description of certain
social classes and the generic or individual process of certain
maladies, there the work of art was absent. A work of science of more or
less superficiality, and without the necessary proofs and control,
filled its place. There is no upholder of impersonality but experiences
a feeling of fatigue for a work of the utmost exactitude in the
reproduction of reality in its empirical sequence, or of industrious and
apathetic combination of images. He asks himself why such a work was
executed, and recommends the author to adopt some other profession,
since that of artist was not intended for him.

Thus it is without doubt that if pure intuition (and pure expression,
which is the same thing) are indispensable in the work of art, the
personality of the artist is equally indispensable. If (to quote the
celebrated words in our own way) the _classic_ moment of perfect
representation or expression be necessary for the work of art, the
_romantic_ moment of feeling is not less necessary. Poetry, or art in
general, cannot be exclusively _ingenuous_ or _sentimental_; it must be
both ingenuous and sentimental. And if the first or representative
moment be termed _epic_, and the second, which is sentimental,
passionate, and personal, be termed _lyric_, then poetry and art must be
at once epic and lyric, or, if it please you better, _dramatic_. We use
these words here, not at all in their empirical and intellectualist
sense, as employed to designate special classes of works of art,
exclusive of other classes; but in that of elements or moments, which
must of necessity be found united in every work of art, how diverse
soever it may be in other respects.

Now this irrefutable conclusion seems to constitute exactly that
above-mentioned apparently serious objection to the doctrine which
defines art as pure intuition. But if the essence of art be merely
theoretic--and it is _intuibility_--can it, on the other hand, be
practical, that is to say, feeling, personality, and _passionality_? Or,
if it be practical, how can it be theoretic? It will be answered that
feeling is the _content_, intuibility the _form_; but form and content
do not in philosophy constitute a duality, like water and its recipient;
in philosophy content is form, and form is content. Here, on the other
hand, form and content appear to be different from one another; the
content is of one quality, the form of another. Thus art appears to be
the sum of two qualities, or, as Herbart used to say in his time, of
_two values_. Accordingly we have an altogether unmaintainable
Aesthetic, as is clear from recent largely vulgarized doctrines of
Aesthetic as operating with the concept of the _infused personality_.
Here we find, on the one hand, things intuible lying dead and soulless;
on the other, the artist's feeling and personality. The artist is then
supposed to put himself into things, by an act of magic, to make them
live and palpitate, love and adore. But if we start with the
_distinction_, we can never again reach _unity_: the distinction
requires an intellectual act, and what the intellect has divided
intellect or reason alone, not art or imagination, can reunite and
synthetize. Thus the Aesthetic of infusion or transfusion--when it does
not fall into the antiquated hedonistic doctrines of agreeable illusion,
of games, and generally of what affords a pleasurable emotion; or of
moral doctrines, where art is a symbol and an allegory of the good and
the true;--is yet not able, despite its airs of modernity and its
psychology, to escape the fate of the doctrine which makes of art a
semi-imaginative conception of the world, like religion. The process
that it describes is mythological, not aesthetic; it is a making of gods
or of idols. "To make one's gods is an unhappy art," said an old Italian
poet; but if it be not unhappy, certainly it is not poetic and not
aesthetic. The artist does not make the gods, because he has other
things to do. Another reason is that, to tell the truth, he is so
ingenuous and so absorbed in the image that attracts him, that he cannot
perform that act of abstraction and conception, wherein the image must
be surpassed and made the allegory of a universal, though it be of the
crudest description.

This recent theory, then, is of no use. It leads back to the
difficulties arising from the admission of two characteristics of art,
_intuibility_ and _lyricism_, not unified. We must recognize, either
that the duality must be destroyed and proved illusory, _or_ that we
must proceed to a more ample conception of art, in which that of pure
intuibility would remain merely secondary or particular. And to destroy
and prove it illusory must consist in showing that here too form is
content, and that pure intuition is _itself_ lyricism.

Now, the truth is precisely this: _pure intuition is essentially
lyricism_. All the difficulties concerning this question arise from not
having thoroughly understood that concept, from having failed to
penetrate its true nature and to explore its multiple relations. When we
consider the one attentively, we see the other bursting from its bosom,
or better, the one and the other reveal themselves as one and the same,
and we escape from the desperate trilemma, of either denying the lyrical
and personal character of art, or of asserting that it is adjunctive,
external and accidental, or of excogitating a new doctrine of Aesthetic,
which we do not know where to find. In fact, as has already been
remarked, what can pure intuition mean, but intuition pure of every
abstraction, of every conceptual element, and, for this reason, neither
science, history, nor philosophy? This means that the content of the
pure intuition cannot be either an abstract concept, or a speculative
concept or idea, or a conceptualized, that is historicized,
representation. Nor can it be a so-called perception, which is a
representation intellectually, and so historically, discriminated. But
outside logic in its various forms and blendings, no other psychic
content remains, save that which is called appetites, tendencies,
feelings, and will. These things are all the same and constitute the
practical form of the spirit, in its infinite gradations and in its
dialectic (pleasure and pain). Pure intuition, then, since it does not
produce concepts, must represent the will in its manifestations, that is
to say, it can represent nothing but _states of the soul_. And states of
the soul are passionality, feeling, personality, which are found in
every art and determine its lyrical character. Where this is absent, art
is absent, _precisely because pure intuition is absent_, and we have at
the most, in exchange for it, _that reflex_, philosophical, historical,
or scientific. In the last of these, passion is represented, not
immediately, but mediately, or, to speak exactly, it is no longer
represented, but thought. Thus the origin of language, that is, its true
nature, has several times been placed in _interjection_. Thus, too,
Aristotle, when he wished to give an example of those propositions which
were not _apophantic_, but generically _semantic_ (we should say, not
logical, but purely Aesthetic), and did not predicate the logically true
and false, but nevertheless said something, gave as example invocation
or prayer, _hae enchae_. He added that these propositions do not
appertain to Logic, but to Rhetoric and Poetic. A landscape is a
state of the soul; a great poem may all be contained in an exclamation
of joy, of sorrow, of admiration, or of lament. The more objective is a
work of art, by so much the more is it poetically suggestive.

If this deduction of lyricism from the intimate essence of pure
intuition do not appear easily acceptable, the reason is to be sought in
two very deep-rooted prejudices, of which it is useful to indicate here
the genesis. The first concerns the nature of the _imagination_, and its
likenesses to and differences from _fancy_. Imagination and fancy have
been clearly distinguished thus by certain aestheticians (and among
them, De Sanctis), as also in discussions relating to concrete art: they
have held fancy, not imagination, to be the special faculty of the poet
and the artist. Not only does a new and bizarre combination of images,
which is vulgarly called _invention_, not constitute the artist, but _ne
fait rien à l'affaire_, as Alceste remarked with reference to the length
of time expended upon writing a sonnet. Great artists have often
preferred to treat groups of images, which had already been many times
used as material for works of art. The novelty of these new works has
been solely that of art or form, that is to say, of the new _accent_
which they have known how to give to the old material, of the new way in
which they have _felt_ and therefore _intuified_ it, thus creating _new
images_ upon the old ones. These remarks are all obvious and universally
recognized as true. But if mere imagination as such has been excluded
from art, it has not therefore been excluded from the theoretic spirit.
Hence the disinclination to admit that a pure intuition must of
necessity express a state of the soul, whereas it may also consist, as
they believe, of a pure image, without a content of feeling. If we form
an arbitrary image of any sort, _stans pede in uno_, say of a bullock's
head on a horse's body, would not this be an intuition, a pure
intuition, certainly quite without any content of reflexion? Would one
not attain to a work of art in this way, or at any rate to an artistic
motive? Certainly not. For the image given as an instance, and every
other image that may be produced by the imagination, not only is not a
pure intuition, but it is not a _theoretic_ product of any sort. It is a
product of _choice_, as was observed in the formula used by our
opponents; and choice is external to the world of thought and
contemplation. It may be said that imagination is a practical artifice
or game, played upon that patrimony of images possessed by the soul;
whereas the fancy, the translation of practical into theoretical values,
of states of the soul into images, is the _creation_ of that patrimony
itself.

From this we learn that an image, which is not the expression of a state
of the soul, is not an image, since it is without any theoretical value;
and therefore it cannot be an obstacle to the identification of lyricism
and intuition. But the other prejudice is more difficult to eradicate,
because it is bound up with the metaphysical problem itself, on the
various solutions of which depend the various solutions of the aesthetic
problem, and _vice versa_. If art be intuition, would it therefore be
any intuition that one might have of a _physical_ object, appertaining
to _external nature_? If I open my eyes and look at the first object
that they fall upon, a chair or a table, a mountain or a river, shall I
have performed by so doing an aesthetic act? If so, what becomes of the
lyrical character, of which we have asserted the necessity? If not, what
becomes of the intuitive character, of which we have affirmed the equal
necessity and also its identity with the former? Without doubt, the
perception of a physical object, as such, does not constitute an
artistic fact; but precisely for the reason that it is not a pure
intuition, but a judgment of perception, and implies the application of
an abstract concept, which in this case is physical or belonging to
external nature. And with this reflexion and perception, we find
ourselves at once outside the domain of pure intuition. We could have a
pure perception of a physical object in one way only; that is to say, if
physical or external nature were a metaphysical reality, a truly real
reality, and not, as it is, a construction or abstraction of the
intellect. If such were the case, man would have an immediate intuition,
in his first theoretical moment, both of himself and of external nature,
of the spiritual and of the physical, in an equal degree. This
represents the dualistic hypothesis. But just as dualism is incapable of
providing a coherent system of philosophy, so is it incapable of
providing a coherent Aesthetic. If we admit dualism, we must certainly
abandon the doctrine of art as pure intuition; but we must at the same
time abandon all philosophy. But art on its side tacitly protests
against metaphysical dualism. It does so, because, being the most
immediate form of knowledge, it is in contact with activity, not with
passivity; with interiority, not exteriority; with spirit, not with
matter, and never with a double order of reality. Those who affirm the
existence of two forms of intuition--the one external or physical, the
other subjective or aesthetic; the one cold and inanimate, the other
warm and lively; the one imposed from without, the other coming from the
inner soul--attain without doubt to the distinctions and oppositions of
the vulgar (or dualistic) consciousness, but their Aesthetic is vulgar.

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