Personality in Literature | Page 6

requirements, and I lay it
down as a self-evident proposition, that if we mean anything at all by
creative literature, or literature regarded as a fine art, we must mean
something which provides us with an addition to experience, an
experience sui generis. We demand that it should be something which
will occupy us and engage our faculties, something not to be
approached carelessly and indolently, but with energy and alertness of
the mind; not because it is abstruse or difficult, but because we are
demanding something which will give full play to the spirit, which will
come profoundly in contact with us when we are in fullest possession
of ourselves, which will not merely stir us, but stir us to activity.
That I would take as an axiom. If we are going to regard fiction, for
example, as a fine art, the artistic novel will be a book which we
approach not for mere distraction, but for activity, mental and spiritual,
for the opportunity it affords of putting forth energy, of giving full play
to the vitality, of going through a vital experience. Just as the keen
golfer delights in the skilful use of eye and limb, and is exhilarated by
the difficulties and the physical exertion of the game, so the keen reader
of a book enjoys the strenuous mental exercise it affords him. To some
extent the mind is more elastic than the body. Even when it is tired it
can sometimes be whipped into energy by thought, or reading, or talk,
whereas the body in its corresponding state cannot so readily respond
with accuracy and effectiveness. But the mind too--Heaven
knows--may be dulled to fine issues; and it is only when it is in
well-balanced activity that it can do full justice to a work of art; and
that is no work of art which the jaded intelligence can wholly grasp.
Anyone who enjoys pictures, and does not care to look at them
perfunctorily or in a "sightseeing" spirit, knows well that he can only
appreciate a picture when he allows eyes and imagination to
concentrate upon it, so that he perceives as well as sees it, and derives a
complex impression from it akin to that which the artist felt at the
moment when he conceived it. And in the same way with every work
of art worthy of the name, whether it be a picture, a statue, a poem, a
play or a novel, it is part of its excellence to call forth activity in the

mind which apprehends it.
But we must note that it not only calls forth activity, but disinterested
activity--and by that I mean an activity of the kind which is especially
called forth in the fine arts, and not that which science, or religion, or
ethics might call forth without the aid of the arts. To preserve the
analogy of golf, it may happen--and generally does happen--that the
playing of golf makes the limbs more elastic and promotes general
health. But to take an interest in golf is not the same thing as to take an
interest in the health-producing results of golf. The true golfer is he
who plays golf for its own sake and without any ulterior end, without
thought of consequences, although consequences of some kind are
inevitable. In the same way the activity called forth in all art, both in
the artist at the time of creation and in the man who is appreciating it, is
disinterested; he is, in proportion as he is an artist or an appreciator of
art, concerned at the moment in nothing but the subject-matter of the
artist, and the treatment; in making or receiving a certain effect, without
thought of the possible practical consequences which may follow
through some inference drawn from the work or some psychological
result attending upon it. This is not a re-statement of the much-abused
theory of "Art for Art's sake," for that theory has always tended to
minimise the importance of subject-matter, and to represent Beauty as
something aloof from the rest of life, instead of being inseparable from
the warp and woof of things social, moral, intellectual, religious, and
physical. When I say that the activity of the artist is disinterested, I do
not mean that he may not be concerned with any conceivable theme
under the sun, but that his business is to provide us with an experience,
and that any end he may have beyond making that experience vivid and
complete is an alien end, destroying his singleness of purpose, wholly
disruptive of his art and destructive to its energy.
And here we must abandon the analogy of a game of skill, for whereas
golf-balls have no interest except as things to be knocked about, the
objects with which poet, dramatist or