The Art of Literature - Arthur Schopenhauer
"_Ist doch"--rufen sie vermessen--
Nichts im Werke, nichts gethan!"
Und das Grosse, reift indessen
Still heran_.
_Es ersheint nun: niemand sieht es,
Niemand hoert es im Geschrei
Mit bescheid'ner Trauer zieht es
Still vorbei_.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben
(1806-49), an Austrian physician, philosopher, and poet, and a
specialist in medical psychology. The best known of his songs is that
beginning "_Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath_" to which Mendelssohn
composed one of his finest melodies.]
This lamentable death of the critical faculty is not less obvious in
the case of science, as is shown by the tenacious life of false and
disproved theories. If they are once accepted, they may go on bidding
defiance to truth for fifty or even a hundred years and more, as
stable as an iron pier in the midst of the waves. The Ptolemaic system
was still held a century after Copernicus had promulgated his theory.
Bacon, Descartes and Locke made their way extremely slowly and only
after a long time; as the reader may see by d'Alembert's celebrated
Preface to the _Encyclopedia_. Newton was not more successful; and
this is sufficiently proved by the bitterness and contempt with which
Leibnitz attacked his theory of gravitation in the controversy with
Clarke.[1] Although Newton lived for almost forty years after the
appearance of the _Principia_, his teaching was, when he died, only
to some extent accepted in his own country, whilst outside England he
counted scarcely twenty adherents; if we may believe the introductory
note to Voltaire's exposition of his theory. It was, indeed, chiefly
owing to this treatise of Voltaire's that the system became known in
France nearly twenty years after Newton's death. Until then a firm,
resolute, and patriotic stand was made by the Cartesian _Vortices_;
whilst only forty years previously, this same Cartesian philosophy had
been forbidden in the French schools; and now in turn d'Agnesseau, the
Chancellor, refused Voltaire the _Imprimatur_ for his treatise on the
Newtonian doctrine. On the other hand, in our day Newton's absurd
theory of color still completely holds the field, forty years after
the publication of Goethe's. Hume, too, was disregarded up to his
fiftieth year, though he began very early and wrote in a thoroughly
popular style. And Kant, in spite of having written and talked all his
life long, did not become a famous man until he was sixty.
[Footnote 1: See especially Sec.Sec. 35, 113, 118, 120, 122, 128.]
Artists and poets have, to be sure, more chance than thinkers, because
their public is at least a hundred times as large. Still, what was
thought of Beethoven and Mozart during their lives? what of Dante?
what even of Shakespeare? If the latter's contemporaries had in any
way recognized his worth, at least one good and accredited portrait of
him would have come down to us from an age when the art of painting
flourished; whereas we possess only some very doubtful pictures, a
bad copperplate, and a still worse bust on his tomb.[1] And in like
manner, if he had been duly honored, specimens of his handwriting
would have been preserved to us by the hundred, instead of being
confined, as is the case, to the signatures to a few legal documents.
The Portuguese are still proud of their only poet Camoens. He lived,
however, on alms collected every evening in the street by a black
slave whom he had brought with him from the Indies. In time, no doubt,
justice will be done everyone; _tempo e galant uomo_; but it is
as late and slow in arriving as in a court of law, and the secret
condition of it is that the recipient shall be no longer alive. The
precept of Jesus the son of Sirach is faithfully followed: _Judge none
blessed before his death._[2] He, then, who has produced immortal
works, must find comfort by applying to them the words of the Indian
myth, that the minutes of life amongst the immortals seem like years
of earthly existence; and so, too, that years upon earth are only as
the minutes of the immortals.
[Footnote 1: A. Wivell: _An Inquiry into the History, Authenticity,
and Characteristics of Shakespeare's Portraits_; with 21 engravings.
London, 1836.]
[Footnote 2: _Ecclesiasticus_, xi. 28.]
This lack of critical insight is also shown by the fact that, while
in every century the excellent work of earlier time is held in honor,
that of its own is misunderstood, and the attention which is its due
is given to bad work, such as every decade carries with it only to be
the sport of the next. That men are slow to recognize genuine merit
when it appears in their own age, also proves that they do not
understand or enjoy or really value the long-acknowledged works of
genius, which they honor only on the score of authority. The crucial
test is the fact that bad work--Fichte's philosophy, for example--if
it wins any reputation, also maintains it for one or two generations;
and only when its public is very large does its fall follow sooner.
Now, just as the sun cannot shed its light but to the eye that sees
it, nor music sound but to the hearing ear, so the value of all
masterly work in art and science is conditioned by the kinship and
capacity of the mind to which it speaks. It is only such a mind as
this that possesses the magic word to stir and call forth the spirits
that lie hidden in great work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is
a sealed cabinet of mystery,--an unfamiliar musical instrument from
which the player, however much he may flatter himself, can draw none
but confused tones. How different a painting looks when seen in a good
light, as compared with some dark corner! Just in the same way, the
impression made by a masterpiece varies with the capacity of the mind
to understand it.
A fine work, then, requires a mind sensitive to its beauty; a
thoughtful work, a mind that can really think, if it is to exist and
live at all. But alas! it may happen only too often that he who gives
a fine work to the world afterwards feels like a maker of fireworks,
who displays with enthusiasm the wonders that have taken him so much
time and trouble to prepare, and then learns that he has come to the
wrong place, and that the fancied spectators were one and all inmates
of an asylum for the blind. Still even that is better than if his
public had consisted entirely of men who made fireworks themselves; as
in this case, if his display had been extraordinarily good, it might
possibly have cost him his head.
The source of all pleasure and delight is the feeling of kinship. Even
with the sense of beauty it is unquestionably our own species in the
animal world, and then again our own race, that appears to us the
fairest. So, too, in intercourse with others, every man shows a
decided preference for those who resemble him; and a blockhead will
find the society of another blockhead incomparably more pleasant
than that of any number of great minds put together. Every man must
necessarily take his chief pleasure in his own work, because it is the
mirror of his own mind, the echo of his own thought; and next in order
will come the work of people like him; that is to say, a dull, shallow
and perverse man, a dealer in mere words, will give his sincere and
hearty applause only to that which is dull, shallow, perverse or
merely verbose. On the other hand, he will allow merit to the work of
great minds only on the score of authority, in other words, because
he is ashamed to speak his opinion; for in reality they give him no
pleasure at all. They do not appeal to him; nay, they repel him; and
he will not confess this even to himself. The works of genius cannot
be fully enjoyed except by those who are themselves of the privileged
order. The first recognition of them, however, when they exist without
authority to support them, demands considerable superiority of mind.
When the reader takes all this into consideration, he should be
surprised, not that great work is so late in winning reputation, but
that it wins it at all. And as a matter of fact, fame comes only by a
slow and complex process. The stupid person is by degrees forced, and
as it were, tamed, into recognizing the superiority of one who stands
immediately above him; this one in his turn bows before some one else;
and so it goes on until the weight of the votes gradually prevail over
their number; and this is just the condition of all genuine, in other
words, deserved fame. But until then, the greatest genius, even after
he has passed his time of trial, stands like a king amidst a crowd of
his own subjects, who do not know him by sight and therefore will not
do his behests; unless, indeed, his chief ministers of state are in
his train. For no subordinate official can be the direct recipient of
the royal commands, as he knows only the signature of his immediate
superior; and this is repeated all the way up into the highest ranks,
where the under-secretary attests the minister's signature, and the
minister that of the king. There are analogous stages to be passed
before a genius can attain widespread fame. This is why his reputation
most easily comes to a standstill at the very outset; because the
highest authorities, of whom there can be but few, are most frequently
not to be found; but the further down he goes in the scale the more
numerous are those who take the word from above, so that his fame is
no more arrested.
We must console ourselves for this state of things by reflecting that
it is really fortunate that the greater number of men do not form a
judgment on their own responsibility, but merely take it on authority.
For what sort of criticism should we have on Plato and Kant, Homer,
Shakespeare and Goethe, if every man were to form his opinion by what
he really has and enjoys of these writers, instead of being forced by
authority to speak of them in a fit and proper way, however little
he may really feel what he says. Unless something of this kind took
place, it would be impossible for true merit, in any high sphere, to
attain fame at all. At the same time it is also fortunate that every
man has just so much critical power of his own as is necessary for
recognizing the superiority of those who are placed immediately over
him, and for following their lead. This means that the many come in
the end to submit to the authority of the few; and there results that
hierarchy of critical judgments on which is based the possibility of a
steady, and eventually wide-reaching, fame.
The lowest class in the community is quite impervious to the merits
of a great genius; and for these people there is nothing left but the
monument raised to him, which, by the impression it produces on their
senses, awakes in them a dim idea of the man's greatness.
Literary journals should be a dam against the unconscionable
scribbling of the age, and the ever-increasing deluge of bad and
useless books. Their judgments should be uncorrupted, just and
rigorous; and every piece of bad work done by an incapable person;
every device by which the empty head tries to come to the assistance
of the empty purse, that is to say, about nine-tenths of all existing
books, should be mercilessly scourged. Literary journals would then
perform their duty, which is to keep down the craving for writing and
put a check upon the deception of the public, instead of furthering
these evils by a miserable toleration, which plays into the hands of
author and publisher, and robs the reader of his time and his money.
If there were such a paper as I mean, every bad writer, every
brainless compiler, every plagiarist from other's books, every hollow
and incapable place-hunter, every sham-philosopher, every vain and
languishing poetaster, would shudder at the prospect of the pillory
in which his bad work would inevitably have to stand soon after
publication. This would paralyze his twitching fingers, to the true
welfare of literature, in which what is bad is not only useless but
positively pernicious. Now, most books are bad and ought to have
remained unwritten. Consequently praise should be as rare as is now
the case with blame, which is withheld under the influence of personal
considerations, coupled with the maxim _accedas socius, laudes
lauderis ut absens_.
It is quite wrong to try to introduce into literature the same
toleration as must necessarily prevail in society towards those
stupid, brainless people who everywhere swarm in it. In literature
such people are impudent intruders; and to disparage the bad is here
duty towards the good; for he who thinks nothing bad will think
nothing good either. Politeness, which has its source in social
relations, is in literature an alien, and often injurious, element;
because it exacts that bad work shall be called good. In this way the
very aim of science and art is directly frustrated.
The ideal journal could, to be sure, be written only by people who
joined incorruptible honesty with rare knowledge and still rarer power
of judgment; so that perhaps there could, at the very most, be one,
and even hardly one, in the whole country; but there it would stand,
like a just Aeropagus, every member of which would have to be elected
by all the others. Under the system that prevails at present, literary
journals are carried on by a clique, and secretly perhaps also by
booksellers for the good of the trade; and they are often nothing but
coalitions of bad heads to prevent the good ones succeeding. As
Goethe once remarked to me, nowhere is there so much dishonesty as in
literature.
But, above all, anonymity, that shield of all literary rascality,
would have to disappear. It was introduced under the pretext of
protecting the honest critic, who warned the public, against the
resentment of the author and his friends. But where there is one case
of this sort, there will be a hundred where it merely serves to take
all responsibility from the man who cannot stand by what he has said,
or possibly to conceal the shame of one who has been cowardly and base
enough to recommend a book to the public for the purpose of putting
money into his own pocket. Often enough it is only a cloak for
covering the obscurity, incompetence and insignificance of the critic.
It is incredible what impudence these fellows will show, and what
literary trickery they will venture to commit, as soon as they know
they are safe under the shadow of anonymity. Let me recommend a
general _Anti-criticism_, a universal medicine or panacea, to put a
stop to all anonymous reviewing, whether it praises the bad or blames
the good: _Rascal! your name_! For a man to wrap himself up and draw
his hat over his face, and then fall upon people who are walking about
without any disguise--this is not the part of a gentleman, it is the
part of a scoundrel and a knave.
An anonymous review has no more authority than an anonymous letter;
and one should be received with the same mistrust as the other. Or
shall we take the name of the man who consents to preside over what
is, in the strict sense of the word, _une societe anonyme_ as a
guarantee for the veracity of his colleagues?
Even Rousseau, in the preface to the _Nouvelle Heloise_, declares
_tout honnete homme doit avouer les livres qu'il public_; which in
plain language means that every honorable man ought to sign his
articles, and that no one is honorable who does not do so. How much
truer this is of polemical writing, which is the general character
of reviews! Riemer was quite right in the opinion he gives in his
_Reminiscences of Goethe:[1] An overt enemy_, he says, _an enemy
who meets you face to face, is an honorable man, who will treat you
fairly, and with whom you can come to terms and be reconciled: but an
enemy who conceals himself_ is a base, cowardly scoundrel, _who has
not courage enough to avow his own judgment; it is not his opinion
that he cares about, but only the secret pleasures of wreaking his
anger without being found out or punished._ This will also have been
Goethe's opinion, as he was generally the source from which Riemer
drew his observations. And, indeed, Rousseau's maxim applies to
every line that is printed. Would a man in a mask ever be allowed to
harangue a mob, or speak in any assembly; and that, too, when he was
going to attack others and overwhelm them with abuse?
[Footnote 1: Preface, p. xxix.]
Anonymity is the refuge for all literary and journalistic rascality.
It is a practice which must be completely stopped. Every article, even
in a newspaper, should be accompanied by the name of its author; and
the editor should be made strictly responsible for the accuracy of the
signature. The freedom of the press should be thus far restricted; so
that when a man publicly proclaims through the far-sounding trumpet of
the newspaper, he should be answerable for it, at any rate with his
honor, if he has any; and if he has none, let his name neutralize the
effect of his words. And since even the most insignificant person is
known in his own circle, the result of such a measure would be to
put an end to two-thirds of the newspaper lies, and to restrain the
audacity of many a poisonous tongue.
ON REPUTATION.
Writers may be classified as meteors, planets and fixed stars. A
meteor makes a striking effect for a moment. You look up and cry
_There!_ and it is gone for ever. Planets and wandering stars last
a much longer time. They often outshine the fixed stars and are
confounded with them by the inexperienced; but this only because they
are near. It is not long before they must yield their place; nay, the
light they give is reflected only, and the sphere of their influence
is confined to their own orbit--their contemporaries. Their path is
one of change and movement, and with the circuit of a few years their
tale is told. Fixed stars are the only ones that are constant; their
position in the firmament is secure; they shine with a light of their
own; their effect to-day is the same as it was yesterday, because,
having no parallax, their appearance does not alter with a difference
in our standpoint. They belong not to _one_ system, _one_ nation only,
but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is
usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of
this earth.
We have seen in the previous chapter that where a man's merits are of
a high order, it is difficult for him to win reputation, because the
public is uncritical and lacks discernment. But another and no less
serious hindrance to fame comes from the envy it has to encounter. For
even in the lowest kinds of work, envy balks even the beginnings of a
reputation, and never ceases to cleave to it up to the last. How great
a part is played by envy in the wicked ways of the world! Ariosto is
right in saying that the dark side of our mortal life predominates, so
full it is of this evil:
_questa assai piu oscura che serena
Vita mortal, tutta d'invidia piena_.
For envy is the moving spirit of that secret and informal, though
flourishing, alliance everywhere made by mediocrity against individual
eminence, no matter of what kind. In his own sphere of work no one
will allow another to be distinguished: he is an intruder who cannot
be tolerated. _Si quelq'un excelle parmi nous, qu'il aille exceller
ailleurs_! this is the universal password of the second-rate. In
addition, then, to the rarity of true merit and the difficulty it has
in being understood and recognized, there is the envy of thousands to
be reckoned with, all of them bent on suppressing, nay, on smothering
it altogether. No one is taken for what he is, but for what others
make of him; and this is the handle used by mediocrity to keep down
distinction, by not letting it come up as long as that can possibly be
prevented.
There are two ways of behaving in regard to merit: either to have some
of one's own, or to refuse any to others. The latter method is more
convenient, and so it is generally adopted. As envy is a mere sign
of deficiency, so to envy merit argues the lack of it. My excellent
Balthazar Gracian has given a very fine account of this relation
between envy and merit in a lengthy fable, which may be found in his
_Discreto_ under the heading _Hombre de ostentacion_. He describes
all the birds as meeting together and conspiring against the peacock,
because of his magnificent feathers. _If_, said the magpie, _we could
only manage to put a stop to the cursed parading of his tail, there
would soon be an end of his beauty; for what is not seen is as good as
what does not exist_.
This explains how modesty came to be a virtue. It was invented only as
a protection against envy. That there have always been rascals to urge
this virtue, and to rejoice heartily over the bashfulness of a man of
merit, has been shown at length in my chief work.[1] In Lichtenberg's
_Miscellaneous Writings_ I find this sentence quoted: _Modesty should
be the virtue of those who possess no other_. Goethe has a well-known
saying, which offends many people: _It is only knaves who are
modest_!--_Nur die Lumpen sind bescheiden_! but it has its prototype
in Cervantes, who includes in his _Journey up Parnassus_ certain rules
of conduct for poets, and amongst them the following: _Everyone whose
verse shows him to be a poet should have a high opinion of himself,
relying on the proverb that he is a knave who thinks himself one_.
And Shakespeare, in many of his Sonnets, which gave him the only
opportunity he had of speaking of himself, declares, with a confidence
equal to his ingenuousness, that what he writes is immortal.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Welt als Wille_, Vol. II. c. 37.]
[Footnote 2: Collier, one of his critical editors, in his Introduction
to the Sonettes, remarks upon this point: "In many of them are to be
found most remarkable indications of self-confidence and of assurance
in the immortality of his verses, and in this respect the author's
opinion was constant and uniform. He never scruples to express it,...
and perhaps there is no writer of ancient or modern times who, for the
quantity of such writings left behind him, has so frequently or so
strongly declared that what he had produced in this department of
poetry 'the world would not willingly let die.'"]
A method of underrating good work often used by envy--in reality,
however, only the obverse side of it--consists in the dishonorable and
unscrupulous laudation of the bad; for no sooner does bad work gain
currency than it draws attention from the good. But however effective
this method may be for a while, especially if it is applied on a large
scale, the day of reckoning comes at last, and the fleeting credit
given to bad work is paid off by the lasting discredit which overtakes
those who abjectly praised it. Hence these critics prefer to remain
anonymous.
A like fate threatens, though more remotely, those who depreciate and
censure good work; and consequently many are too prudent to attempt
it. But there is another way; and when a man of eminent merit appears,
the first effect he produces is often only to pique all his rivals,
just as the peacock's tail offended the birds. This reduces them to
a deep silence; and their silence is so unanimous that it savors of
preconcertion. Their tongues are all paralyzed. It is the _silentium
livoris_ described by Seneca. This malicious silence, which is
technically known as _ignoring_, may for a long time interfere with
the growth of reputation; if, as happens in the higher walks of
learning, where a man's immediate audience is wholly composed of rival
workers and professed students, who then form the channel of his fame,
the greater public is obliged to use its suffrage without being able
to examine the matter for itself. And if, in the end, that malicious
silence is broken in upon by the voice of praise, it will be but
seldom that this happens entirely apart from some ulterior aim,
pursued by those who thus manipulate justice. For, as Goethe says in
the _West-oestlicher Divan_, a man can get no recognition, either from
many persons or from only one, unless it is to publish abroad the
critic's own discernment:
_Denn es ist kein Anerkenen,
Weder Vieler, noch des Einen,
Wenn es nicht am Tage foerdert,
Wo man selbst was moechte scheinen_.
The credit you allow to another man engaged in work similar to your
own or akin to it, must at bottom be withdrawn from yourself; and you
can praise him only at the expense of your own claims.
Accordingly, mankind is in itself not at all inclined to award praise
and reputation; it is more disposed to blame and find fault, whereby
it indirectly praises itself. If, notwithstanding this, praise is
won from mankind, some extraneous motive must prevail. I am not here
referring to the disgraceful way in which mutual friends will puff one
another into a reputation; outside of that, an effectual motive is
supplied by the feeling that next to the merit of doing something
oneself, comes that of correctly appreciating and recognizing what
others have done. This accords with the threefold division of heads
drawn up by Hesiod[1] and afterwards by Machiavelli[2] _There are_,
says the latter, _in the capacities of mankind, three varieties:
one man will understand a thing by himself; another so far as it is
explained to him; a third, neither of himself nor when it is put
clearly before him_. He, then, who abandons hope of making good his
claims to the first class, will be glad to seize the opportunity of
taking a place in the second. It is almost wholly owing to this state
of things that merit may always rest assured of ultimately meeting
with recognition.