Censorship and Art | Page 9

work of Art.
But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever
so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite practical
thought or impulse--to that extent and for that moment it has stolen me
away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me to the
universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that
moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art.
The word "impersonal," then, is but used in this my definition to
signify momentary forgetfulness of one's own personality and its active
wants.
So Art--I thought--is that which, heard, read, or looked on, while
producing no directive impulse, warms one with unconscious vibration.
Nor can I imagine any means of defining what is the greatest Art,
without hypothecating a perfect human being. But since we shall never
see, or know if we do see, that desirable creature--dogmatism is
banished, "Academy" is dead to the discussion, deader than even
Tolstoy left it after his famous treatise "What is Art?" For, having
destroyed all the old Judges and Academies, Tolstoy, by saying that the
greatest Art was that which appealed to the greatest number of living
human beings, raised up the masses of mankind to be a definite new
Judge or Academy, as tyrannical and narrow as ever were those whom
he had destroyed.
This, at all events--I thought is as far as I dare go in defining what Art
is. But let me try to make plain to myself what is the essential quality
that gives to Art the power of exciting this unconscious vibration, this
impersonal emotion. It has been called Beauty! An awkward word--a
perpetual begging of the question; too current in use, too ambiguous
altogether; now too narrow, now too wide--a word, in fact, too glib to
know at all what it means. And how dangerous a word--often
misleading us into slabbing with extraneous floridities what would
otherwise, on its own plane, be Art! To be decorative where decoration
is not suitable, to be lyrical where lyricism is out of place, is assuredly
to spoil Art, not to achieve it. But this essential quality of Art has also,
and more happily, been called Rhythm. And, what is Rhythm if not that
mysterious harmony between part and part, and part and whole, which
gives what is called life; that exact proportion, the mystery of which is
best grasped in observing how life leaves an animate creature when the

essential relation of part to whole has been sufficiently disturbed. And I
agree that this rhythmic relation of part to part, and part to whole--in
short, vitality--is the one quality inseparable from a work of Art. For
nothing which does not seem to a man possessed of this rhythmic
vitality, can ever steal him out of himself.
And having got thus far in my thoughts, I paused, watching the
swallows; for they seemed to me the symbol, in their swift, sure
curvetting, all daring and balance and surprise, of the delicate poise and
motion of Art, that visits no two men alike, in a world where no two
things of all the things there be, are quite the same.
Yes--I thought--and this Art is the one form of human energy in the
whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers
between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement,
however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life;
the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous,
dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves,
with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from
ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's
profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement. The active
amusements and relaxations of life can only rest certain of our faculties,
by indulging others; the whole self is never rested save through that
unconsciousness of self, which comes through rapt contemplation of
Nature or of Art.
And suddenly I remembered that some believe that Art does not
produce unconsciousness of self, but rather very vivid self-realisation.
Ah! but--I though--that is not the first and instant effect of Art; the new
impetus is the after effect of that momentary replacement of oneself by
the self of the work before us; it is surely the result of that brief span of
enlargement, enfranchisement, and rest.
Yes, Art is the great and universal refreshment. For Art is never
dogmatic; holds no brief for itself you may take it or you may leave it.
It does not force itself rudely where it is not wanted. It is reverent to all
tempers, to all points of view. But