Guest. — I begin to be at a loss to comprehend you.
Uncle. — But I think I am able to follow in some measure; — how far, I shall try to make clear by an example. We will suppose our artist had made an eagle in bronze which perfectly expressed the idea of the species, but now he would place him on the scepter of Jupiter. Do you think it would be perfectly suitable there?
Guest. — It would depend.
Uncle. — I say, No! The artist must first impart to him something beyond all this.
Guest.— What then?
Uncle. — It is hard to express.
Guest. — So I should think.
I. — And yet something may be done by approximation.
Guest. — To it then.
I. — He must give to the eagle what he gave to Jupiter, in order to make him into a God.
Guest. — And this is —
I. — The Godlike, — which in truth we should never become acquainted with, did not man feel and himself reproduce it.
Guest. — I continue to hold my ground, and let you ascend into the clouds. I see that you mean to indicate the high style of the Greeks, which I prize only so far as it is characteristic.
I. — It is something more to us, however; it answers to a high demand, but still not the highest.
Guest. — You seem to be very hard to satisfy.
I. — It beseems him to demand much for whom much is in store. Let me be brief. The human soul is in an exalted position when it reverences, when it adores; when it elevates an object and is elevated by it again. But it cannot remain long in this state. The general concept of genus leaves it cold; the Ideal raises it above itself; but now it must return again into itself; and it would gladly enjoy once more that affection which it then felt for the Individual, without coming back to the same limited view, and will not forego the significant, the spirit-moving. What would become of it now, if Beauty did not step in and happily solve the riddle? She first gives life and warmth to the Scientific, and breathing her softening influence and heavenly charm over even the Significant and the High, brings it back to us again. A beautiful work of art has gone through the entire circle; it becomes again an Individual that we can embrace with affection, that we can make our own.
Guest. — Have you done?
I. — For the present. The little circle is completed; we have come back to our starting point; the soul has made its demands, and those demands have been satisfied. I have nothing further to add. (Here our good uncle was peremptorily called away to a patient.)
Guest. — It is the custom of you philosophic gentlemen to engage in battle behind high-sounding words, as if it were an aegis.
I. — I can assure you that I have not now been speaking as a philosopher. These are mere matters of experience.
Guest. — Do you call that experience, whereof another can comprehend nothing?
I. — To every experience belongs an organ.
Guest. — Do you mean a separate one?
I. — Not a separate one; but it must have one peculiarity.
Guest. — And what is that?
I. — It must be able to produce.
Guest. — Produce what?
I. — The experience! There is no experience which is not brought forth, produced, created.
Guest. — This is too much!
I. — This is particularly the case with artists.
Guest. — Indeed! How enviable would the portrait painter be, what custom would he not have, if he could reproduce all his customers without troubling people with so many sittings!
I. — I am not deterred by your instance, but rather am convinced no portrait can be worth anything that the painter does not in the strictest sense create.
Guest (springing up). — This is maddening! I would you were making game of me, and all this were only in jest. How happy I should be to have the riddle explained in that manner! How gladly would I give my hand to a worthy man like you!
I. — Unfortunately, I am quite in earnest, and cannot come to any other conclusion.
Guest. — Now I did hope that in parting we should take each other's hand, especially since our good host has departed, who would have held the place of mediator in your dispute. Farewell, Mademoiselle! Farewell, Sir! I shall inquire to-morrow whether I may wait on you again.
So he stormed out of the door, and Julia had scarce time to send the maid, who was ready with the lantern, after him. I remained alone with the sweet child, for Caroline had disappeared some time before, — I think about the time that my opponent had declared that mere beauty, without character, must be insipid.
You went too far, my friend, said Julia, after a short pause. If he did not seem to me altogether in the right, neither can I give unqualified assent to you; for your last assertion was only made to tease him. The portrait painter must make the likeness a pure creation?
Fair Julia, I replied, how much I could wish to make myself clear to you upon this point. Perhaps in time I shall succeed. But you, whose lively spirit is at home in all regions, who not only prize the artist but in some sense anticipate him, and who know how to give form to what your eyes have never seen, as if it stood bodily before you, you should be the last to start when the question is of creation, of production.
Julia. — I see it is your intention to bribe me. That will not be hard, for I like to listen to you.
I. — Let us think well of man, and not trouble ourselves if what we say of him may sound a little bizarre. Everybody admits that the poet must be born. Does not everyone ascribe to genius a creative power, and no one thinks he is repeating a paradox? We do not deny it to works of fancy; but the inactive, the worthless man will not become aware of the good, the noble, the beautiful, either in himself or others. Whence came it, if it did not spring from ourselves? Ask your own heart. Is not the method of intercourse born with intercourse? Is it not the capacity for good deeds that rejoices over the good deed? Who ever feels keenly without the wish to express that feeling? and what do we express but what we create? and in truth, not once only, that it may exist and there end, but that it may operate, ever increase, and again come to life, and again create. This is the godlike power of love, of the singing and speaking of which there is no end, that it reproduces at every moment the noble qualities of the beloved object, perfects it in the least particulars, embraces it in the whole, rests not by day, sleeps not by night, is enchanted with its own work, is astonished at its own restless activity, ever finds the familiar new, because at every moment it is re-created in the sweetest of all occupations. Yes, the picture of the beloved cannot grow old, for every moment is the moment of its birth.
The maid returned from lighting the stranger. She was highly satisfied with his liberality, for he had given her a handsome pourboire; but she praised his politeness still more highly, for he had dismissed her with a friendly word, and, moreover, called her " Pretty Maid."
I was not in a humor to spare him, and exclaimed: " Oh, yes! I can easily credit that one who denies the ideal should take the common for the beautiful."
ON TRUTH AND PROBABILITY IN WORKS OF ART
A Dialogue