Philosophies of Art and Beauty by Albert Hofstadter

Author:Albert Hofstadter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Moreover, if art is brought to completion by two thoroughly different activities, then genius is neither the one nor the other but that which is above both. If we must seek in one of these two activities, namely conscious activity, for what is usually called art, but which is merely one part of art, namely, the part that is practiced with consciousness, deliberation, and reflection, which can also be taught and learned, received from others, and attained by one's own practice, then, on the other hand, we must seek in the unconscious, which also enters into art, for that in art which cannot be learned, cannot be attained by practice or in any other way, but can only be inborn by the free gift of nature, and which is what we may call in one word the poetry in art.

Obviously, then, it would be utterly futile to ask which of the two constituents is prior to the other; for in fact either without the other has no value and only the two in conjunction can bring forth the highest. For though that which cannot be achieved by practice but is native with us is generally considered the nobler of the two, the gods have so firmly tied the exercise of that original power to painstaking human effort, to industry and deliberation, that without art, poetry, even where it is innate, produces only products that appear lifeless, in which no human understanding can take delight, and which repel all judgment and even intuition by the completely blind force at work in them. On the contrary, it is rather to be expected that art might be able to accomplish something without poetry than poetry without art, partly because a person can hardly be by nature devoid of poetry, while many have no art, and partly because persistent study of the ideas of the great masters can to some degree compensate for an original lack of objective power. Still, only a semblance of poetry can arise in this way, which is easily distinguishable by its superficiality, in contrast with the inexhaustible depth which the true artist, though he works with the greatest presence of mind, puts into his work involuntarily and which neither he nor anyone else is able to penetrate completely. There are also many other characteristics by which such mere semblance of poetry is distinguishable, e.g., the great value it places on the merely mechanical features of art, the poverty of the form in which it moves itself, etc.

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