__TITLE__
Marxist-Leninist
Aesthetics
and Life
__TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2007-06-15T04:04:41-0700
__TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov"
__SUBTITLE__
A Collection
PROGRESS
PUBLISHERS
MOSCOW
[1]Editors: I. KULIKOVA and A. ZIS
Translated from the Russian~
MAPKCHCTCKO-JIEHHHCKAfl 3CTETHKA
H >KH3Hb
HO OHZAUUCKOM JI3blKe
There are probably few problems in the field of aesthetics which are of such serious and immediate political significance as the development of national artistic cultures. Whatever aspect of it one takes---whether it be the national peculiarities of an artistic culture, the class, national and international elements in it, the national style or genres of a national art---one invariably touches upon the subject of the interrelations of different peoples and different social groups in society. Therefore this problem demands a very thoughtful approach.
It is generally acknowledged that the national question is one of the most vital issues of modern times. It is difficult not to concur with this view---especially today, when the mighty forces of the national-liberation movement have stirred into action in the East, when the social and national-liberation movements in the Western capitalist countries are closing ranks and becoming increasingly intertwined, and when the experience gained in solving the national question in the Soviet Union and other socialist states is constantly winning newer and newer adherents in various parts of the world.
But the problem of national relations demands great attention under conditions of socialism as well. History has irrefutably proven that socialism completely eliminates national oppression and exploitation of man by man and ensures not only legal but also actual social equality for all peoples. But it is equally clear that it is wrong td identify class and national relations; for whereas socialism eliminates class antagonisms, and whereas class distinctions are gradually erased in the course of communist construction, then this cannot be said of all national peculiarities: the ones that tend to fade away are those which in their origin and social essence are bound up with survivals of the past in people's consciousness and way of life.
5International, Lenin stressed, does not by any means imply antinational. On the contrary, nations and national cultures flourish on the ground of proletarian internationalism. Lenin resolutely spoke out against those who, identifying and confusing national prejudices with nation, maintained that with the triumph of socialist revolution nations would die out forthwith. Objecting to the arguments of the leftist deviationists, who rejected the nation in the name of the ``world republic" of Soviets Lenin declared at the Eighth Party Congress: ``This is splendid, of course, and eventually it will come about, but at an entirely different stage of communist development."^^1^^ It was even logical to suppose that some inessential features tied in with climatic and other conditions of life will still remain after communism has become an integral part of the life of all peoples.
As L. I. Brezhnev underlined in his speech on the 50th anniversary of the USSR, national relations in socialist society are ``a constantly developing reality, which keeps putting forward fresh tasks and problems''. So long as there are nations---and national differences, Lenin said, will also exist a very long time after the victory of communism on a world-wide scale---national relations will demand unremitting attention. This is not because they entail any kinds of ``eternal'' conflicts, as bourgeois ideologists and revisionists of all shades maintain, but because the economic and cultural development of socialist nations is accompanied by a growth in the national consciousness of the people and in their sensing of their own international unity and national dignity; because in the course of the development of national relations in all fields of life, including the sphere of culture and art, new questions keep arising which demand solutions. Besides, under socialism there are specific national interests which must be harmonised with the public interest in the general course of communist construction. This is the objective side of the problem. At the same time the problem of national relations has its own subjective side, as it were.
With the triumph of socialism genuinely amicable co-operation is established for the first time in history among all classes of society, all its social groups, and all nations and nationalities. However, even so nationalistic survivals still remain and are a hindrance to nations' flourishing and achieving rapprochement. These survivals are kindled and exaggerated in every way possible by bourgeois ideologists of the West.
In general it is naive to think that with the triumph of worker _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 193
6 and peasant power, successes in economic development will automatically lead, of their own accord, to the elimination of all nationalistic survivals. Economics is not everything; the policy of strengthening and expanding international ties and relations of proletarian internationalism also acquires huge significance. It stimulates both a feeling of ``family unity" and a feeling of national pride, pride in the contribution of one's people to the common cause of communist construction, a feeling of patriotism which forms on the basis of proletarian internationalism and possesses enormous creative force.Thus, even in conditions of developed socialism, when society has long been rid of social and national oppression, when both the legal and actual equality of nations are ensured and they have been granted national statehood, when an indestructible union of socialist republics has been created, that is---to use the words of L.I.Brezhnev---when ``we have successfully dealt with those aspects of the national question that we have inherited from tho prerevolutionary past'', we are still not entitled to shun the problems of the development of nations and their arts.
The notion that with the triumph of socialism, national relations become a secondary or immaterial matter and only warrant attention because nationalistic survivals remain, has nothing in common with Marxism. Such an idea is nothing more than a nihilistic prejudice towards the national, one which objectively invigorates nationalistic survivals and may do very great harm. This is especially so today, when the advocates of the bourgeois way of life are trying their best to undermine the unity of the working people both within the world socialist system as a whole and in every socialist country by kindling nationalistic prejudices, isolating the national from the international and setting them in opposition to each other.
All this equally applies to the sphere of art and aesthetics, especially since, in the opinion of many bourgeois theoreticians, progress in artistic culture and the universal elements in this culture supposedly exist in contradiction to the ``spirit of nationality''. According to their viewpoint, one can only talk about the national in art in reference to the ``infantile'' stage in a people's advancement; the development of professional art allegedly puts an end to everything of national or folk origin. This theory, which expounds a ``universal'', ``super-national'' artistic culture, is still in circulation to this day, although it was dealt a crushing blow long ago by the practical results of the October Revolution. For over the expanses of a vast country populated by many nationalities it was indisputably shown that an international artistic culture arises and 7 grows stronger not in spite of national development, but through the all-round development of the progressive and vital potentialities of national artistic cultures---in the process of their creative co-operation on a socialist basis.
Inasmuch as it stood on the so-called ``cultural crossroads between East and West'', Soviet multinational art absorbed a variety of progressive national traditions. That is why the experience gained in the progress of the peoples of the USSR towards socialism is so extraordinarily instructive in this respect. Our unified, multinational socialist culture serves as a prototype of the future for all continents. Even back at the First Congress of Soviet Writers Maxim Gorky noted that the multi-racial, multi-lingual literature of all our republics was emerging as a united whole before the eyes of the Soviet proletariat, the revolutionary proletariat of all countries and sympathetic writers of the whole world.
Naturally, our country does not foist on others its massive wealth of experience in achieving a socialist solution to the national question in all spheres of social life, including the field of art, but neither do we make a secret of it. The Soviet people know that reciprocity, co-operation and creative communion between national artistic cultures are a mighty factor behind spiritual growth. Of this they are convinced first and foremost through their own experience. Thanks to the triumph of socialism and the consistent implementation of the Leninist national policy, we have rid ourselves of national enmity for ever and embarked upon a practical course of truly fraternal co-operation between peoples in the fields of economic, political and cultural relations.
The formation of a unified and integral artistic culture common to all the peoples of the USSR was no easy task. This is particularly understandable if one considers that before the October Revolution the peoples of our country were at different stages of cultural and artistic development. Moreover, the contrasts between them were quite glaring: some of them boasted an art which held an honoured place in world culture, while others still lived under feudal and tribal relations and had nothing but their folklore. The latter had to be ensured a rapid ascent to the pinnacles of socialist art---and with due consideration for all the diversity in their mode of life.
However, this difficult task was brilliantly fulfilled. Having cast in their lot with the revolution, the artists of all the peoples of the 8 Soviet Union were helped along by the irresistible stream of life itself. The spirit of the revolutionary events found its way into their works. Naturally the historical process of self-discovery among the various peoples took distinctive national forms, but all national arts were nourished by a common life-giving source born of the revolution: artists were inspired by the ideas of a new world, the problems of building it, by characters and themes which could be liberally drawn from the life of the emancipated masses. This is what accounts for the creative resonance of our national artistic cultures---a resonance which was distinctly heard from the first days of Soviet power---and the innovatory essence of both our art as a whole and that of each nation taken separately. This creative collaboration also laid down the principal course of development of Soviet art, for all artists of our boundless homeland, regardless of the national material from which they created their works, were guided by one lodestar---socialism. Against its standards both individual artists and whole national cultures sized themselves up and appraised their creative work, for in revolution, in the peoples' socialist aspirations, they found a fulcrum for their innovatory quests, their creative darings.
National artistic cultures took various approaches to the common problems of creating new forms of life, but all these approaches were simply different facets of a single social and aesthetic ideal common to the working people of all our country's nations and nationalities and to the revolutionary proletariat of the entire world. Each of the peoples of our multinational state expressed and interpreted it in the specific national form that was native to it; but these forms were simply distinctive aspects and features of a unified---and essentially socialist---conception of the new man, whom the revolutionary epoch was creating in its own image and likeness. ``Seizing on" these features of the new man, art not only reflected what was happening in the thick of life but took an active part in the moulding of a man. It sketched the new man as artists of various peoples saw him in their depiction of life---in his actions and deeds, in his links with and relations to revolutionary reality, in the struggle against everything obsolescent or holding back progress.
The art born of the October Revolution looked boldly into the future. True, this future was conceived of at first in terms that were still rather too general and diffuse, but it was a ``down-to-earth'' dream that emerged from life itself, a dream which originated in the mass practice of millions and anticipated the natural course of history. Perhaps this explains the fact that---in literature for example---the socialist, communist social and aesthetic ideal was 9 first embodied in lyrical forms of artistic expression. It appeared here as a new poetic attitude to the world that was also a political attitude at the same time. And although at first this poetic attitude to the world did not always attain artistic maturity, it burst into the field of art with a powerful impact, because it turbulently pulsated through life itself and gradually became the flesh and blood of art, its nerve, its artistic thought. The artist stood close to where the masses were building a new world with their hands. He looked at the world through the eyes of a revolutionary, through the eyes of a politician, poetically interpreting everything that was being created, revealed and enriched in the revolutionary practice of the masses, in the fierce battles of the class struggle, in the process of creating a new, socialist humanism.
Needless to say, the road that led to the creation of a new socialist humanism was not an easy one. Many artists only found it after an agonising struggle with their own selves, with their own prejudices, with attitudes that had taken shape over many centuries. But life in its progressive development led them unswervingly towards the socialist, communist ideal, while this ideal---by entering into the artist's soul, becoming his thought, his feeling, his conviction---helped him to see the old in a new light and the new in the context of its inexorable struggle with that of the old which was moribund. And although the method of socialist realism did not immediately become the essence of our art and emerged at first in primitive forms in those peoples which were making the transition to the new life from a precapitalist structure, it was socialist realism that gave new impetus to art and ushered in a glorious era in the ideological and aesthetic development of every Soviet artist, every people of our homeland, and all progressive humanity.
The conditions of developed socialism created new and incomparably broader opportunities for the ideological and aesthetic growth of national artistic cultures, for the fruitful development of Soviet art in a striking diversity of national forms, styles and colours. And today we have a whole community of cultures, socialist in content.
Now that the Soviet Union has entered the 54th year of its existence, the international essence of the Great October Revolution and those changes which it brought with it are revealing themselves with special clarity in the life and consciousness of people, in their ideology and psychology. A historically new community of people---the Soviet people---and a corresponding united multinational artistic culture have arisen and now exist in our country without doing away with any national features at all. 10 This culture is a new and unprecedented phenomenon. It develops on its own socialist base, stimulating the growth of all national cultures. And on looking back and closely studying the process of its formation, the magnitude of what has been created can be distinctly seen. The process of raising and gradually evening out the levels of the Soviet peoples' economic, cultural and artistic development by means of assistance from the more advanced to the less advanced peoples has been under way in our country since the very first years of Soviet power, a process headed at all stages by the working class. Under developed socialism the old distinctions in levels of economic, social and political and cultural development have ceased to exist. Today all republics of the Soviet Union have a powerful and diversified industry, large-scale and highly mechanised agriculture, and an advanced science and culture. A new type of nation has arisen---the socialist nation, free from class antagonisms, united by the common character of the vital interests of all its social groups under the leadership of the working class. This indestructible union of free republics has become firmly entrenched. The prejudices and antiquated national distinctions in the culture and way of life of all our country's peoples are being eliminated with new vigour. Also proceeding at an intensive pace, moreover, is another process, whereby national artistic cultures are being brought closer together, mutually enriched, and encouraged to draw upon their,resources---a process of all-round development on the basis of the best national traditions and international artistic experience of the Soviet peoples. The emergence of the Soviet way of life has been accompanied by the formation of a new, Soviet, man, who has matured and is developing within the unity of his international and national interests, thoughts and feelings, and all his spiritual qualities, including his emotional and aesthetic ones.
As was emphasised at the 24th Congress of the CPSU, we are now witnessing a process in our country whereby the socialist nationalities are not only flourishing themselves, but gradually drawing closer together. This is taking place under conditions characterised by the consolidation and development of a new historical community of people, the Soviet people, and by new harmonious relations between classes, social groups and all peoples---relations of fraternity and cooperation. Moreover, the national interests of the Soviet state are inseparable from the struggle for cohesion among the socialist countries and the world communist movement.
The clauses on the development of national relations under developed socialism in the documents of the 24th Congress of the CPSU were elaborated further and specified in L.I. Brezhnev's 11 report on the occasion of the USSR's 50th anniversary. They are also fully relevant to the problems of national artistic cultures.
Our party has comprehensively outlined:~
---the essence of the culture of the multinational Soviet people and the prospects for the development of this united, socialist and internationalist in its content artistic culture;~
---the dialectics of the national and international, universal, in the advancement of developed socialist society's artistic culture---a culture which embraces the most valuable features and traditions of the art of each of the Soviet peoples and, in its turn, exerts a favourable influence on their development and spiritual enrichment;~
---the decisive significance of socialist content and the necessity of consolidating in every possible way the international foundations of the national artistic cultures of the Soviet peoples and the great creative force of the international factor in their development;~
---the social essence of national peculiarities under socialism, and their expression in artistic culture;~
---the process of forming, on the basis of socialist internationalism, a communist social and aesthetic ideal and a common method of socialist realism as well as national styles and artistic forms of it, so that common international features become more and more visible in the variety of the national forms of Soviet socialist culture;~
---the role of socialist realist art in educating the masses in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and Soviet patriotism, in the struggle against bourgeois nationalism and each and all of its manifestations;~
---the universal historical significance of the world-wide artistic culture of socialism, its influence on the artistic development of humanity, and the fundamental distinction in the processes of internationalisation of economic and cultural life under socialism and capitalism.
The success of socialism in spiritually enriching the lives of peoples and their cultures is great and indisputable. Today anyone can see for himself that nothing is more capable of reviving, stimulating and developing all that is most human in man than the rich soil of proletarian internationalism. It ensures the socialist development of national .feelings as well. This is reflected in works of art. Remaining the distinctive artists of their people, the creators of these works direct themselves to depicting the life of both their own and other peoples, sketch their positive features and their participation in the struggle for the revolutionary transformation of the world under the leadership of the working class---the leading 12 force of socialist, communist renewal. But socialism not merely elevates man, liberates him from a slavish feeling of humility and oppression, and helps him to attain a feeling of national dignity, nor does it merely fill this feeling with socialist content. It engenders in Soviet people a wholesome sense of the great community of the peoples of the USSR. This feeling of pride on the part of the Soviet man, which is common to all nations and nationalities of our country, represents---as L. I. Brezhnev noted in his report on the 50th anniversary of the USSR---``a feeling that is vast, allembracing and immensely rich in content. It is broader and more profound than the natural national feeling of each of the peop.les forming our country''.
In the conditions created by such a historical community as the Soviet people, the concept of ``one's own'', ``kindred'' and ``native'' is much richer and grander in content than ever before. It embraces our entire socialist homeland. Everything socialist, communist ``in oneself'' and ``in others" becomes ``native'', ``one's own" and ``kindred'', and everything that impedes and contradicts socialism and communism ``in one's own country" and ``in others" is rejected by the consciousness and feelings of Soviet man. Besides, even those ``native'' and ``kindred'' things which are ``close by" acquire for us a significance and grandeur of their own only due to our international experience, for they are created with the direct participation of all Soviet peoples. In this regard the economic, political and cultural ties of this united family have strengthened to such an extent that the Soviet people have acquired a new spiritual image: all of them, regardless of national affiliation, are united by a socialist patriotism and internationalism, by a thirst for vigorous activity in the name of communism, by class solidarity with working people of all countries, by an implacable hostility towards social and colonial oppression and towards national and racial prejudices. And this is understandable: under socialism the ideals of the working class are adopted by all working people, all social groups of society, all nations and nationalities. But the revolutionary consciousness of the working class is, of course, inseparable from socialist internationalism, which harmoniously combines national feelings with the united family feeling of the peoples of the USSR, of world socialism, of the international communist movement, and does so without permitting any contraposing of them. This monolithic, many-coloured blending of the thoughts, feelings and volitional impulses of Soviet man as a patriot and internationalist represent the most striking expression and manifestation of his social essence. And this essence is socialism. It embraces all aspects both of the national being and 13 consciousness of each Soviet people and their attitude towards one another, towards the peoples of the socialist community, towards the working people of the whole world. This is our greatest achievement, and it is one of world-wide historical significance.
The Communist Party is taking a decisive stand against both the ignoring and the inflating of national peculiarities. Educating the masses in the spirit of proletarian internationalism, it has always waged an implacable struggle against each and all forms of nationalism and chauvinism. The Party does everything to ensure that the fraternal union of the Soviet peoples is continually filled with new vitality and grows stronger day by day, year after year.
The continuous consolidation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which is a new historical community---the Soviet people---is accompanied by progressive development on the part of its artistic culture, which embodies the spiritual and aesthetic unity of the socialist nations. Moreover, the internationalist consciousness of the Soviet people has a most vigorous influence on its aesthetic sense. Not only does it enrich the aesthetic ideas of every nation and nationality, but it also helps them to understand the spiritual world of their own and other peoples more fully and comprehensively, to value highly everything lofty and beautiful that is born of creative labour and of the mind and heart of the united family, and to gain a deeper knowledge of the social, political and ideological unity of the Soviet peoples. In his own day Maxim Gorky noted how important it was that artists should create talented works not only about life of their own people but about those of other Soviet peoples. This helps the peoples concerned to gain a closer and better knowledge of one another and, at the same time, promotes the exchange of progressive ideas, including aesthetic ideas, by enriching the socialist content of every national culture and strengthening the traditions of socialist realism in art which are common to all peoples of the USSR.
Life itself and the historical laws governing social and artistic development demand that at the present time, in conditions of developed socialism, the international spiritual community of the Soviet people and common Soviet artistic traditions be strengthened in every possible way. The flourishing of national artistic cultures leads to consolidation of their international unity, which in turn contributes to the all-round flourishing of national arts.
That is why the problem of developing national artistic cultures cannot be restricted in scope. This fact makes it all the more difficult to agree with those who, turning their backs on the present day, see genuinely national features only in antiquity, in those 14 features of national culture and art which are the product of patriarchal times. These theoreticians clearly fail to realise that national consciousness is in a state of constant development freeing itself from the prejudices of the past on the basis of socialism, and that national survivals die out but national psychology remains; moreover, this psychology is much different from that which was characteristic of our country's various peoples and social strata before the October Revolution. Consequenly, anyone who glorifies and idealises the patriarchal not only ignores the full extent of the Soviet peoples' spiritual development but deliberately or unwittingly denigrates and belittles the socialist stage in their life and the significance of their culture's socialist content. For it is precisely socialist culture that leads peoples out onto the broad road of artistic progress. The poet Yaroslav Smelyakov justifiably spoke of this:
_-_-_With most profound justification,
In quest of knowledge, eagerly
Today we delve in the foundations
Of national antiquity.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But in the joys of exploration,
'Twould be a loss beyond repair
If we forgot the red-starred helmet
Which our Red Army used to wear.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If we forgot, while busy digging
Among cathedral bric-a-brac
The second christening of Russians
In '43, near the Dnieper's bank.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It is impossible to measure
The world-embracing breadth of mind
Thai came into our nation's make-up
And linked it up with all mankind.^^*^^
^^*^^ Translated by Dorian Rottenberg.---Ed.
15Art is an extremely valuable means of promoting the historical self-discovery of entire peoples and the spiritual and aesthetic development of all mankind. Back in his own day Tolstoy stressed, in his discussion of history as science and as art, that history as art is less sequential than history as science in depicting the fortunes of nations and individual human lives, for art concentrates not on breadth but on depth; its content may range from describing the life of all Europe to describing the life and thoughts of a single person. Indeed, the distinctive feature of art lies in this very fact, that in portraying individual phenomena, tableaux and images, it reveals that which is common and typical. Thus the aesthetic value of artistic works in the historical development of mankind is directly proportional to the depth with which they deal with major problems of the life of entire peoples---problems of universal significance.
Particularly revealing in this respect is the work of Mikhail Sholokhov. It represents an artistic chronicle of our country, a talented portrayal of the most significant, the most important stages in its life. These stages reveal most fully all the essence of our era, the era of revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism, i.e. the tendencies of universal progress.
Sholokhov's works are usually about the Don Cossacks: And Quiet Flows the Don portrays the Civil War in this part of Russia, while Virgin Soil Upturned deals with collectivisation. But both the Civil War and collectivisation are shown in a way that links them with the life of the country as a whole; for the fate of Grigory Melekhov or Kondrat Maidannikov reveals not only the path of the Don Cossacks or the Russians, but that of all the other peoples of our homeland. And although these common features and processes---the Civil War and collectivisation of agriculture---take their own particular forms on the national soil of each people (thus in Soviet Central Asia they were marked by peculiarities unknown in Central Russia), the distinctive traits characterising the historical development of our country's various peoples took shape not in spite of general laws but rather on the basis of them, in correspondence with them.
This is why the work of Soviet writers of different styles reveals common links and attitudes, relates destinies common to the peoples of the USSR---and not to them alone. Much of what Sholokhov recounts is characteristic in various degrees of other socialist countries. Hence the enormous interest aroused there by, 16 say, Virgin Soil Upturned. Even so, general human experience cannot be reduced to similarites in the historical phenomena experienced by various peoples. Otherwise how can one explain the fact that in the European countries of the world socialist system, where there was no civil war, And Quiet Flows the Don enjoys as much success as Virgin Soil Upturned.
One explanation that immediately suggests itself is that the peoples of the world take a lively interest in the life of the Soviet people as the first people to have stepped out on the road of socialism, in the political and moral image of Soviet man, which manifests the traits of universal communist ethics and aesthetics. Through their works Soviet artists help people in all parts of the world to feel, visualise and understand ``the universal moral and historical significance of Soviet construction as a whole'', as Alexei Tolstoy put it. There is a large grain of truth in this consideration. The universal significance of works of art lies in their direct dependence upon what role the given people play in the progressive development of mankind in the given epoch.
But this is not all. Although all Soviet artists have before them a reality that is full of supreme heroism and dramatic qualities, not every one of them is an artist of world significance whose works can be regarded as achievements of world culture; by no means all of them have the ability to realise in their artistic practice those objective prerequisites which are determined by our country's position in the modern world, by the role of that ideology, those morals, and those aesthetics of which the Soviet Union and our party are the bearers. Here much depends on the talent of the artist, the depth of his artistic cognition of the life of the people, on the leading present-day tendencies and the struggle between the two systems, that is, on the aesthetic merits of the very reflection of reality in its essential links and relations.
In his own day Lenin comprehensively showed in his articles on Tolstoy that in showing the universal significance of a great writer, one must always visualise the era which the artist reflects and the way he does it, i.e., to what extent his artistic activity coincides with historical necessity, with the activity of the masses, with the revolutionary development of reality.
In any case one thing is indisputable: the artist fully manifests his talent and his creative potentialities when he merges with the people in their revolutionary fervour and expresses in his works the objective demands of progressive social development. Lenin wrote that if the man before us is a truly great artist, then he should reflect in his works at least some of the essential aspects of the revolution. And the entire history of artistic culture, especially in 17 our own times, testifies to the fact that an inseverable link with life on the part of a writer, composer or painter---an inseverable link with the thoughts and feelings of the people---is a necessary condition for his all-round ideological and artistic development.
Of course, this link differs from era to era. All kinds of human activity, including artistic activity, arc determined by the historical opportunities of the era and of the society in which the artist lives.
Truth in art has an objective content. But in so far as an artisticwork is created by a person, it not only expresses his class aspirations but bears the stamp of a particular national character and particular personal and social experience. The artist is the child of his society and of his people. At the same time, however, the course of historical necessity always leaves scope for the manifestation of the abilities, interests and aesthetic tastes of the human personality, for various forms of artistic creativity and expression of the distinctive nature of the artist's own ideological development. In other words, truth in art is not merely mechanical reproduction of an object; everything depends on the depth of the cognition, on the artist's comprehension of reality, of his country's progressive tendencies.
Real art cannot comprehend life's phenomena in general or nonconcrete terms, but neither can it comprehend them narrowly. An event mentioned in a work may only be of local significance, but the artist himself must have a broad outlook. As for the artist of socialist realism, he must understand the whole significance of the great transformations of the century and view what he writes about, what he relates, from these standpoints. He must understand the course of events and the direction they are taking. Only through such an approach can he reveal the destinies of people and the dynamics of social development in historical and concrete terms.
Thus in studying the ideological and aesthetic merits of a work and its universal significance it is necessary to bear in mind at least three interrelated points: firstly, the essence of the era and the depth of the artist's comprehension of its conflicts and of life's leading tendencies in their development; secondly, the outlook and talent of the artist, his maturity and freshness of feeling, skill and originality; thirdly, the artistic form which crystallises the artist's personal and social experience, elevating it to the heights of typifying generalisation and revealing the links of the people with the whole world history. But these links can be revealed in a work in various ways---through a single character or through a group, by depicting the life of one people or many peoples, as long as it is clone in a striking, impressive and artistically convincing fashion. Yet all the same this becomes possible owing to the fact that an 18 artistic form has the ability to reveal the universal and the typical through the individual and the singular. The deeper these universal links with reality are revealed, the greater the significance of a work of art's universal content. It should only be borne in mind that what is meant here is the depth of artistic cognition of reality in a work's unity, of content and form, and not merely its construction.
As far as a work's construction is concerned, the degree of generalisation of life's phenomena in it may vary. The most general may acquire symbolic significance. But this does not mean that a symbol in art is necessarily ``more universal" in its content than a character shown in the concrete everyday relations and features of ordinary life. A symbol is often more universal in terms of impact, but this is certainly not always the case in essence. A work packed with everyday life experience may go considerably deeper in its knowledge of life, strength of feeling and beauty of its ideas than an artistic image, a symbol. Moreover, a symbol in art only acquires profound meaning when it has concrete historical content and rests upon the best traditions of national and world artistic culture. Finally, a symbol in art does not necessarily have to take on an abstract form; it may also be revealed in all the concrete terms of daily life, as, for example, the image of Grigory Melekhov. The universal in art is characterised by the symbol, the ideological and aesthetic quality, the depth, objectivity and truth of comprehension of historical reality and the era's revolutionary substance in the form of a consummate artistic image.
Nevertheless, certain scholars, some of them quite conscientious researchers of literature and art, suppose that a work of art's significance for all mankind is determined according to whether it is recognised or not by the majority of people. With this it is impossible to concur, and not only because it is difficult sometimes to consider the opinion of the majority, but also because it is impossible to substitute subjective criteria for objective ones. It is perfectly evident that an analysis of the reasons for the popularity of artistic works is helpful in resolving the question of an objective criterion of the universal value of artistic phenomena, but even general meaningfulness cannot by itself be viewed as a criterion. The universal in art should be distinguished according to its meaningfulness and degree of dissemination. These aspects are undoubtebly interrelated, but they are not of equal significance, especially since, as works on the theory of literature and art have stressed time and again, the universal has limits to its recognition. And it is not acknowledged straight away, we might add. Moreover, in this respect different approaches should be employed with reference to different kinds of art and even different genres.
19However, there can be no doubt that the universal takes us beyond the bounds of individual national cultures, countries and continents onto the broad highway of world-wide historical artistic practice. In other words, the international significance of artistic values develops into a universal significance when they begin to reveal with great artistic force the revolutionary content of the era and the meaning of society's national and international life in its world-historical phase, which promotes the artistic development of all mankind. At the same time we should view world-wide historical artistic practice in its dialectical development, distinguishing the universal in a work or national culture during its transition from one socio-economic formation (and its corresponding era) to another, within the context of these various formations, and, correspondingly, in the process of world art's progressive advance---from stage to stage, from formation to formation---in their interrelations and unity. But we shall not analyse this complex and multi-plane problem here so as not to deviate from our theme.
We shall merely note that the objective criterion of the universal significance of a work of art in our era is its ability to promote the advancement of individual peoples and mankind as a whole towards communism; for everything that meets the needs of the progressive development of society promotes communism in one way or another. This does not mean that a universal culture now includes only socialist realist works; it means that it also includes critical realist works by artists of the capitalist countries, but only to the extent that they reflect the essential phenomena of our times with veracity and aesthetic depth. Hence, the closer artists are to the reality underlying revolutionary transformations, to the struggles of peoples, the more actively they are involved through their works, and the stronger their solidarity with the progressive ideas of the century, the greater their opportunities for creating works worthy of pur era.
The world socialist system is now a decisive factor in the development of mankind. This accounts for the great interest aroused in all parts of the world by the experience of the Soviet people and other peoples of the socialist countries. In the movement of the Soviet peoples towards socialism and communism there are quite a number of distinctive features. At the same time, however, it is significant that on the eve of the October Revolution Russia was a conglomeration of all kinds of social contradictions and this was reflected in the development of proletarian, peasant and national liberation movements, which fused into a single common stream. It is also apparent that some peoples set out on the road to socialism when they already possessed a developed 20 industry and culture, others proceeded to socialism from tribal forms of social consciousness and relations, bypassing capitalism. This is extremely instructive. For this same path is now also being followed by other peoples of the world which have embarked upon a socialist course of development. And it is precisely because we have reached the stage of developed socialism and accumulated so much ideological and spiritual, political, aesthetic and moral socialist experience that the works of Soviet art are winning huge public response throughout the world.
It is the communist social and aesthetic ideal that most fully reveals the universal content of the era, for all the roads of progress today lead to communism in the final analysis. The best works of Soviet art embody the most humanistic aspirations of our century. Thus, through translations and screen adaptations these works quickly win the sympathies of people in various parts of the world.
Take, for instance, the film ``A Soldier's Father''. It is impossible to view it without being moved. How much naive pathos, emotional warmth, courage and humaneness there is in the character and behaviour of the old Georgian who sets off to find his son on the battlefields! All this is congenial and understandable to people of the entire world. The same can be said of other talented Soviet works about the Great Patriotic War. By reflecting the heroics of everyday military life and portraying Soviet people, they assert in a highly artistic manner the most noble and righteous ideas and the lofty moral feelings, splendour and greatness of a people fighting for its freedom. Moreover, even when our talented artists portray the national character or a tableau of national life on a local scale, the problems which they raise are of world-wide historical significance. And the characters depicted by them are not circumscribed by any narrow national bounds.
A work of Soviet art which takes shape on specific national grounds reveals, if it is a really significant work, not only special but also general features of the Soviet peoples' being and consciousness and their spiritual character. The phenomena which an artist relates may be of a local or a world historical scale, the characters may be taken from his own or some other national milieu, but whatever the case may be, the events, phenomena and characters are shown from the standpoint of the leading revolutionary tendencies of the era, and these tendencies, these laws, are common to all nations and nationalities. It is these tendencies which in our era lead peoples to communism. Herein lies the strength of our art, of our communist ideal, which embodies in itself the most noble and splendid aspirations of mankind. The universal in the art of every era is that which 21 expresses the loftiest spiritual and aesthetic values of the peoples that correspond to the progress of mankind. It is those works which truthfully, in a perfect artistic form reflect the essential features of the life of the given people, the processes signifying the world-wide historical advancement of society.
Thus a universal, international culture is not non-national; it cannot be viewed as something supranational. A universal artistic culture is replenished by the works of all peoples, big and small. It does not reject specific national peculiarities in modern conditions, but positively presupposes them and absorbs all the best created by each nation and nationality. At the same time it is precisely because works of this kind transcend narrow national bounds and attain world-wide significance that they are entitled to the name of universal. They always remain national in their affiliations and in their sources. However, consummate artistic representation of the era's leading tendencies acquires---by virtue of becoming a fact--- the most general significance, and the sphere of its aesthetic impact is not limited to the people concerned.
It is sometimes said that the universal in culture is determined by specific national features. This is not accurate. To be sure, it is difficult to imagine a genuinely significant work of art with no specific national character. However, in the first place, there are works which are emphatically national and contain many ethnographical details, but which fail to convey the spiritual life of the people. In the second place, there are also works which vividly and tenderly describe moribund aspects of a particular people's life, glorify national peculiarities and express not the mind of the masses but their prejudices, whereas the universal in art is always bound up with the new and progressive, with the mind of the people. And, in the third place, the history of culture testifies to the fact that by no means all the artists who hold an eminent place in national culture are thereby known abroad in the realm of world art. Moreover, although all national cultures participate in one way or another in the world artistic process, by no means all of them acquired world significance at every given moment. In order to determine the place of national art in the general world process, it is necessary first of all to place it in the framework of a world historical era, to understand whence and whither the cultural and artistic development of the given people is proceeding, to elucidate further to what extent it reflects the most progressive social relations of the century and the direction of historical development, and to ascertain how deeply and artistically it reveals its progressive socio-aesthetic ideal. Then, by analysing the concrete processes and phenomena of artistic culture, it will be possible to understand also 22 in what degree the art of a given people influences the structure of world artistic culture.
There is every ground for asserting that world artistic culture develops through works national in their affiliations which reveal most fully, deeply and vividly the life of their time and its essential relations and attitudes. These works reflect the vital demands of society's social and aesthetic development. Hence the continuity of mankind's artistic development: each new generation is guided by the achievements of previous stages and augments and enriches artistic cultural values in new conditions. Consequently, the universal principle is also to be found in the art of the preceding eras. This can be traced easiest of all by analysing the so-called ``eternal themes" which pass from century to century to be filled each time with new content. Our ideal does not reject the best that was earlier achieved by mankind, for socialist culture does not emerge in a vacuum or away from the road of civilisation, but as a natural result of the foregoing cultural development. But we go further. The communist is the highest expression of the universal: firstly, because it embodies the most noble---and historically realisable---ideas and aspirations of the masses, and, secondly, because, as it develops, the culture of a communist formation absorbs the achievements of all previous eras and develops them on a new basis which is conducive in every way to the flowering of the spiritual capabilities of the masses in general and every personality in particular.
In the culture of the past one must separate the living from the stillborn, the sublime from the base, the great from the worthless, the universal from the transient. The process of developing communist artistic culture unavoidably gives rise to the problem of critically assimilating the legacy of the past and selecting values. For the cultures of different eras make different contributions to social progress. Moreover, in pre-socialist eras each of them was limited in its ability to bring it about, to say nothing of the fact that before socialism social progress was bought at the incredibly high price of the people's sufferings and was not free from serious artistic losses. After a lengthy period of time, the universal elements of culture develop in the forms of class consciousness, but often, in the pre-socialist period, it did not coincide or fully coincide with objective cognition. Therefore, in the artistic culture of the past centuries there are quite a number of elements which reflect class subjectivism. Nor should one forget the narrow division of labour and, consequently, the conditions limiting the creative development of the personality and the masses in all class antagonistic formations.
23However, when discussing the class society, the universal instances in art should not under any conditions be metaphysically contrasted with its class content. Art in a class society always presupposes a class approach to the cognition of life and to its interpretation.
In a class antagonistic society there is not and cannot be a ``single stream" in the development of artistic culture. Neither is there nor can there be a non-class universal artistic culture, although ideologists of the exploiting classes have at times been inclined to present the ideals, causes and aspirations of their class as non-class and non-historical. In this regard the problems of class and popular elements or class and common human elements in art acquire important significance. They are important because in the conditions of an antagonistic society the universal emerged in a class form---for example, the honour of the nobility in the Middle Ages or enterprise of the bourgeoisie during the rise and development of capitalism. Both in life and in art these notions always contain certain class limitations. But it is equally evident that in the conditions of antagonistic formations the ruling classes ascribed to themselves features evolved in the course of historical development by the working people. This applies in equal measure both to those classes and social groups which at certain stages of historical development did not distinguish themselves from the people (the ``third estate''), and those which lived at the expense of the people (for instance, the nobility under feudal conditions). But one must avoid vulgarisation. Thus, although for Pushkin the principle of class was, in the words of Belinsky, an ``eternal truth'', at the same time he promoted social progress through his work, just as did the Decembrists, whose ideology and deeds define a whole stage in Russia's liberation movement.
It is wrong to allege that in the past all the artists of the ruling classes (regardless of their era) were defenders of the mercenary interests of a minority. This was not the case at all. As regards the Enlighteners of the 18th century, for example, Lenin noted that new social relations and their contradictions were then still in an embryonic state. He stressed in fact that the Enlighteners of the 18th century (who are generally regarded as leaders of the bourgeoisie) and the Enlighteners in Russia of the forties and sixties ``quite sincerely believed in universal well-being and sincerely desired it, they sincerely did not see (partly could not yet see) the contradictions in the system which was growing out of serfdom"~. Accordingly, no class self-interest manifested itself in them.
Nor is it possible to ignore the fact that the role of different classes in the formation and development of national culture and 24 universal artistic values in various countries and eras tended to differ---or the fact that in the past universal elements in art frequently made themselves felt in spite of class prejudices and the self-interest of the exploiting classes. However, in expressing the various class aspirations of artists, all genuinely aesthetic values are free from class egoism. They give a true cognition of life in the light of the progressive socio-aesthetic ideals of their time and to the extent that the views of the artists correspond to these ideals, to the demands of social life.
In the given case, however, we shall not embark on a special examination of this problem. We shall merely note that in an antagonistic society the class struggle is the driving force of cultural development. At the same time, the further general historical progress develops, the more the role of the working masses in the field of art and culture as a whole is to be observed, even under the conditions of the antagonistic society. This has an impact on all its spheres. ``Minds,'' said Karl Marx, ``are always connected by invisible threads with the body of the people.'' It would be incorrect to exaggerate the contribution of the exploiting classes to the formation of nations and their culture either in the modern era or in preceding ones; from the viewpoint of Marxism-Leninism a nation, like a national culture, cannot be viewed as the product of the creative energy of any one class---nobility or bourgeoisie. The basic role in the formation of national cultures in all periods of history was played by the working people. In view of this it is impossible to understand anything about the development of national cultures if one takes a non-historical approach to their analysis, without studying the struggle and interaction of all classes of society in these processes.
In modern conditions the role of the people---the workers, peasants and working intelligentsia---in the formation and development of national artistic cultures has grown to an extraordinary degree. When we say that our era is an era of transition from capitalism to socialism on a world-wide scale, we are already thereby emphasising that in modern conditions the universal is expressed by socialist culture which has a decisive impact on the artistic development of mankind; while absorbing the universal in the art of previous centuries it selects all the finest and most valuable in it. Every class, upon coming to power, appraises the culture of the past in its own way. But in all pre-socialist formations the use made of the values of the past was one-sided. Only the working class---the bearer of a communist, universal culture---is free from this narrow and one-sided outlook. Not for nothing did Lenin point out that the work of Tolstoy, like that of any artist of 25 genius, can only he truly appreciated by the working class. The working class alone is able to draw the true conclusions from Tolstoy's remarkably strong and sincere criticism of the autocratic serf state, the church, and the bourgeois-landowner civilisation, and to discard his reactionary ideas of ``non-resistance to evil'', advocation of asceticism, all-forgivingness, etc.
With the triumph of socialist revolution all social groups rally around the working class. In the conditions of the transitional period a socialist culture that is genuinely of the people becomes the dominant one, and then, with the elimination of each and every exploiting class, with the full victory of socialism, it becomes common to the entire people. This means that in conditions of socialism all values of artistic culture belong to the people, which actively and consciously participates in its creation with every possible support from the socialist state.
A socialist, communist artistic culture does not, of course, arise in a vacuum. The ground for it is prepared by the entire course of previous history. However, this is not simply a continuation of the past; nor is it even simply a revolution in the field of culture. Revolutions in the development of artistic culture took place earlier, too. This is a special kind of revolution, one which opens up a new era in the history of mankind, when artistic culture no longer develops on the basis of private property but on that of public property. This is a qualitatively new culture: spontaneous social development gives way to a conscious process; an era of limited development of the personality gives way to one in which it blossoms to the full. By this very fact socialist, communist culture opens the door to genuinely historical phenomena in the artistic development of mankind. The working class is the first class in history to strive not for the perpetuation of its domination but for the surmounting of classes and all class distinctions. Its class interests fully correspond to the demands of social progress.
In socialist society the class and the objective, the class and the universal coincide in cognition for the first time ever. The working class emerges here as the bearer of a universal culture, that is, a culture free from all fetters of private ownership relations. That is why namely the working class is able to unite around itself all working people and the flower of the intelligentsia. That is why it is capable of appraising and utilising everything of genius, everything genuinely great that is to be found in the art of all times and peoples, making these values the property of the broad masses of working people.
Whereas in bourgeois society ``mass culture" is an ersatz 26 phenomenon, in socialist society all culture and all its greatest values belong to the masses. Whereas earlier a narrow and limited class cultural inheritance prevailed, this assimilation now acquires a comprehensive character and all our artistic values shine forth with a true gleam. This means that in conditions of socialism everything of universal significance is put at the service of the people. The novelty lies in the character of this culture, for everything communist in its essence is common to all the people; universal in character.
However, this does not mean that a universal socialist culture ceases to be a class culture in its content.
In conditions of socialism classes still remain and, consequently, so do specific class interests; in the consciousness of a certain section of the people there are still survivals of the past. Apart from this, in modern conditions in the capitalist countries and the international arena an unabating struggle continues between two cultures---between the democratic, socialist culture on the one hand and reactionary culture on the other. And it is perfectly understandable why: for these cultures are opposed to each other in the basis of their world outlook, in their class roots. Therefore, it is natural that the class and ideological principles which these two cultures pursue and uphold are irreconcilable in their objective essence.
However, this cannot by any means serve as an obstacle to the exchange of genuinely artistic values between peoples on the basis of peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems. On the contrary, in our times, when the scientific and technological revolution is becoming widespread in the world, the need for exchange of cultural values is growing. International detente is also promoting this. But, of course, co-operation in the field of culture is only possible when there is respect for the sovereignty, the laws and the customs of each country. Only on this condition will it promote social progress, the spiritual mutual enrichment of peoples, the growth of trust between them and the consolidation of the ideas of peace and good-neighbourliness.
The Soviet Union has broad cultural ties with the countries of the socialist system and with other states as well. Within the world socialist community creative mutual enrichment between national cultures is growing deeper and consolidation of socialist culture is taking place. An ever more powerful impact on the development of national artistic cultures is being made by the working class in the capitalist countries: the artists which unite around it make up the leading force of artistic progress and stand forth as its standardbearers.
27In a word, the bearers of a universal culture in our era are the working class and its offspring, the world socialist system, which promotes the consolidation and development of everything progressive and democratic to be found in every national culture and thereby furthers the development of a universal culture expressing the vital demands of our century. Proceeding from this it can be said that in the modern era, with the existence of and struggle between two world systems, two ideologies, artistic works acquire a significance in direct proportion to the vigour with which they participate on the side of peace forces, democracy and socialism in the struggle against reactionary bourgeois ideology ---directly proportional to the depth and degree of artistry with which they reveal to the working class, to all working people, to all mankind, the road to communism.
The problems bound up with the study of national relations and national cultures are very complex and many-faceted. They demand close analysis, especially since the problem of the national and the international in art is in its essence a composite problem, like the problem of national relations as a whole. And the more complex the questions subject to research, the more refined and perfect the methods and modes of cognition and the greater the soundness, depth and thoughtfulness demanded by them. Unfortunately, upon examining the problems of national artistic cultures, their interaction and mutual enrichment, one sometimes comes across ``hatchet work''.
There can be no doubt that a great deal has been done in our country in studying national artistic cultures and the process of their mutual enrichment. Great benefit has been derived from the discussion that has taken place in recent years on problems of national relations. But it is equally clear that we cannot turn their various conclusions into a fetish. It is generally known that disputes give birth not only to truth but sometimes even to errors---extremes are tolerated, one-sidedness arises....
They also make themselves known in works on the questions of national relations. On the one hand, it is sometimes declared that nations and national languages are now dying off or are being reduced to nil, or that the distinguishing feature of a nation in the Soviet socialist state is already now, or at least will be ``with the establishment of the basis of the higher phase of communism'', only its national language. On the other hand, separate attempts are being undertaken to preserve out-of-date traditions and customs, and at times the internationalist structure of Soviet multinational artistic culture, the rapprochement of the national cultures of the peoples of the USSR in modern conditions, and the 28 role of the mutual enrichment of national languages are underestimated; at other times we find a lack of understanding of the functions and spheres of activity of the Russian language, which in our country has historically become the common language of the inter-national associations of the peoples. All this is no more than a result of the instability of ideological and theoretical standpoints.
The lack of solid scientific principles can also explain the fact that in examining the problems of national relations and national cultures, including artistic, some participants of recent discussions trusted strong epithets and the irrevocability and categorical character of their own judgements more than a profound analysis of the facts, their concrete and historical researching which, as Lenin taught, obliges one to ``examine every question from the standpoint of how the given phenomenon arose in history and what were the principal stages in its development, and, from the standpoint of its development, to examine what it has become today''.
It is perfectly evident that only persistent and determined study of national relations and national artistic cultures on the basis of Marxist-Leninist methodology can yield an increment of knowledge and an explanation of new phenomena, and this is necessary both for an understanding of the process of the development of national artistic cultures in our country and in order to shape systematically its results in the spirit of MarxismLeninism, in the interests of the building of communism.
[29] __ALPHA_LVL2__ ARTISTIC CREATIVITY AND LENIN'S THEORY OF RELFECTIONK. Dolgov
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.The roots of the theory of reflection can be traced back to antiquity, to the times when the ancient Greek philosophers tried to solve the problems of cognition of the cosmos, of the world around them, striving also to understand themselves. But only with the advent of Marxist philosophy did the theory of reflection become a genuine science and the theoretical basis of all human cognition. It received a true scientific grounding and development in the works of K. Marx, F. Engels, and especially V. I. Lenin, and as a result became known as Lenin's theory of reflection.
V. I. Lenin wrote: ``...the first stage, moment, beginning, approach of cognition is its finitude (Endlichkeit) and subjectivity, the negation of the world-in-itself---the end of cognition is at first subjective...."^^1^^ And indeed, human cognition, at least in its individual form, is always of a finite, subjective nature and pursues subjective ends; this can be explained, above all, by the fact that the cognition of reality is effected through the subject and by means of the subject.
A great danger of exaggerating or absolutising the subjective factor in human reflection of the cognition of reality is concealed in the situation indicated. This leads to a divorcing of cognition from the object, in connection with which Lenin wrote: ``Kant took the finite, transitory, relative, conditional character of human cognition (its categories, causality, etc., etc.) as subjectivism, and not as the dialectics of the idea (=of nature itself), divorcing cognition from the object."~^^2^^
_-_-_^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 206
~^^2^^Ibid., p. 207
30What is the significance and role of the categories of the subjective and objective in art?
Art, being a form of consciousness, reflects the real world which exists independently of human consciousness. According to the principle of Marxist-Leninist gnosiology, the object of reflection and means of reflection are historically determined and conditioned by the level of production and culture attained. However art allows man to ``overstep'' the limits of his times. In reflecting actual reality, in reflecting a definite object or certain of its features, the artist goes further: during the process of his creativity he reproduces not simply the object, but also the prospects for its development. In this sense art is not ruled by time.
In any case---whether the artist reproduces the past, present or future---he will proceed from the reflection of actual reality existing at the given moment. What is more, reproduction of the past and predictions of the future are entirely determined by the present: a concrete and historical object constitutes the initial moment of the process of reflection, though its role is not reduced only to this. Any work of art encompasses the past, present and future, irregardless of whether it is dedicated to the past, future or present. This ``supra-historical character" of awork of art is conditioned by the specifics of art as an artistic and image reflection of reality, as a specific subjective and objective relationship. A concrete and historical object is such not by virtue of its own isolation from the past and future but on the contrary, only by virtue of its own intimate link with the past and the future.
However a concrete and historical object existing in real time and space is one thing, but the reflection of the given object in art is another: irrespective of whether a work of art represents a real object (statue, architectural edifice) or whether it exists as something imagined (an architectural edifice in a painting), a work of art as such possesses its own imagined, ``unreal'' space and time, its own ``unreal'' existence which reflects an object actually existing. In addition to their usual existence in the form of an object, artistic creations have a ``second life'', the life of a work of art, which constitutes their true existence. Let us recall Aristotle~-'s example: when a sculptor begins working with a slab of marble that statue which he intends to create is already in his consciousness---it can be said that the statue's ideal existence precedes its real existence. The subject not only reproduces the object but also creates it. This is expressed both in the fact that the artist also creates objects and phenomena not existing before in nature (architectural edifices, statues, symphonies, etc.), and in the fact that he transforms already existing objects according to the laws of beauty.
31Man humanises nature and objectivises himself while transforming nature. This is especially vividly revealed in art. No matter which work of truly realistic art we take, the humanistic aspect will be present. However a certain difference in manifestations of ``the human element" in art does exist: it is evident in portrait painting or portrait sculpture, and as to any architectural edifice, paysage or decorative pattern, their ``human element" is not expressed directly but exists as though relegated to second place. In the one case we see the manifestation of the human nature of art in the obvious fact that any work of art is created by a human being. In the other, the human-nature of art is manifested in the ``human object" when a work portrays man directly. Finally, in the third case; its human nature is expressed indirectly rather than directly, by means of a more or less relative image, for example paintings of nature with the aid of colours, lines, etc. (paysages, decorative patterns, etc.). In all works of art social man, the subject, is the principal object of artistic creativity. Man humanises nature by means of society and thanks to society. Thus in his lyric poetry the poet expresses above all his own attitude towards reality, his own emotional experiences, himself, his own ``subjectivity'', however he does this always through some object lying outside of this ``subjectivity''.
V. I. Lenin's principle that follows is extremely important for an understanding of the essence of artistic creativity: ``Man's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it."^^1^^ Indeed, the true meaning of artistic creativity lies precisely in not only and not simply reflecting the world, but also in creating, in the process of man's practical and spiritual interaction with nature, with reality, and in the process of the subject's interaction with the object, artistic values that did not exist before. As results of human labour and creativity works of art appear as a world ``objectifying'' human essence thus revealing the depth and the nature of man's practical and spiritual attitude to reality and that of the subject's to the object. ``The notion (~=man), as subjective, again presupposes an otherness which is in itself (= nature independent of man). This notion ( = man) is the impulse to realise itself, to give itself objectivity in the objective world through itself, and to realise (fulfil) itself.
``In the theoretical idea (in the sphere of theory) the subjective notion (cognition?), as the universal and in and for itself indeterminate, stands opposed to the objective world, from which it obtains determinate content and fulfilment.''^^2^^
_-_-_^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 212
~^^2^^ Ibid.
32It stands to reason that nature and practice appear as the starting point and basis of man's creative activities.
``One cannot begin philosophy with the `Ego'. There is no 'objective movement'."^^1^^ Just as one cannot begin with the `Ego' in art. The ``beginning'', or the starting point in art always has to be objective. But one cannot conceive of art without the human `Ego', without the subject, and without its creative activity, during the process of which and owing to which man changes himself and his surrounding reality according to the laws of beauty. The whole point is that man does not exist passively in the world but actively. He constantly ``relates'' to the world both theoretically and practically. During the course of this constant theoretical and practical relation to the world the subject develops a confidence in his actuality and in the ``non-actuality'' of the world, that is, as Lenin wrote, ``...the world does not satisfy man and man decides to change it by his activity''.^^2^^
However the objective world develops according to its own laws. In order to change it, it is necessary not only to cognise these laws but also to transform the world during the course of revolutionary practice. ``The `objective world' 'pursues its own course', and man's practice, confronted by this objective world, encounters 'obstacles in the realisation' of the End, even 'impossibility...'^^3^^". However the ends in man's activity in transforming the world are not only and not simply subjective; they arise out of reality itself, or more accurately, are the ``demand'' of reality and man's practice. Precisely this is why objective reality and practice are the starting point, the basis of human cognition and reflection of the world.
By influencing man's consciousness and forming his attitude to the world and, subsequently, world outlook, art is capable of giving human activity a definite direction, goal and meaning, namely by not simply changing the world but by changing it aesthetically, according to the laws of beauty. In the present case the question is of that same complicated dialectics of the ideal's passing into the real about which V. I. Lenin wrote: ``The thought of the ideal passing into the real is profound: very important for history. But also in the personal life of man it is clear that this contains much truth. Against vulgar materialism.... The difference of the ideal from the material is also not unconditional, not `` \"uberschwenglich."^^4^^ The reflection of objective reality in art---as, incidentally, in science as well---is of an ideal nature. In addition, it _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 104
^^2^^Ibid., p. 213
~^^3^^Ibid., p. 214
~^^4^^Ibid., p. 114
__PRINTERS_P_34_COMMENT__ 2---171 33 would not be right to understand the process of reflection as something passive, dead; on the contrary, the reflecting of reality by the human creative consciousness is of an active, effective nature. The active nature of reflection manifests itself particularly vividly in art. Art engages man's practical activity not only in the ``photographed'' form but also immediately---as activity in creating works of art. The unorthodoxy of man's cognition of reality appears more distinctly in an artist's work. The will of man also manifests itself more conspicuously in an artist's work, facilitating and simultaneously impeding advancement towards attaining the set goal; in addition, the combining of cognition and practice appears more clearly and concentrated here. This explains both the extreme complexity and difficulty of artistic creativity in general and the essential manifestations of its features, specifically the personal, ``subjective'' nature of artistic creativity. If, perhaps, it is possible to explain to any person how one work or another is or was created, then to teach a person how to create a genuine work of art is impossible if he does not have the definite inclinations and talent to be an artist.Practice always appears as the ``meeting place" of the subject with the object, the place of their interaction and mutual influence. In art, ``technique''---artistic technique---is this ``meeting place" of the artist and the actual world.
It is only natural that practice bears a ``subjective'' nature, or more accurately, subjective-objective attitudes in art are of a personal, individual nature. The logic of art has common points of contact with the logic of science. This is determined above all by objective reality and by the fact that practical and theoretical as well as practical and spiritual relationships are always those which presuppose the presence of a subject and object. In the sphere of scientific cognition and scientific creativity these relationships acquire an ``objective'' appearance or form, and in the field of artistic creativity---a ``subjective'' or ``subject'' appearance or form.
What constitutes the common character of the logic of science and the logic of art? V. I. Lenin spoke of three premises characterising scientific, logical cognition: ``First premise: The good end (subjective end) versus actuality ('external actuality'). Second premise: The external means (instrument), (objective). Third premise or conclusion: The coincidence of subjective and objective, the test of subjective ideas, the criterion of objective truth.''^^1^^ Scientific, logical cognition begins with the presence of objective reality and the subject's definite end in changing that reality. One _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 217
34 has to have necessary instruments in order to change reality. During the course of practical activity reality is changed in accordance with the subjective end. Besides, one must search for the criterion of achieved or unachieved conformity with reality and the planned end in practice itself.In art objective reality and the subjective end is also the initial premise. The final conclusion also consists in the coincidence of the subjective and objective. The difference apparently lies in the specifics of the means for achieving the planned end and also in the form of coincidence of the subjective and objective.
Man, as a social and conscious being, sets himself definite ends which, as a rule, he conceives of as his personal subjective ends. This is precisely why Lenin said that man's ends at first seem alien to nature. However these ends are actually an expression and reflection of objective demands and objective natural laws just as all the basic means of achieving the planned ends are determined by the laws of the objective world. Lenin said: ``In actual fact, men's ends are engendered by the objective world and presuppose it,---they find it as something given, present. But it seems to man as if his ends are taken from outside the world, and are independent of the world (`freedom')."^^1^^ The importance of these of Lenin's theses for art, artistic creativity and creativity in general is obvious.
How often a man, when stepping onto the difficult path of creativity, strives to set himself tasks which no one had ever set before. A period of agonising searchings and meditations begins. Ends are replaced by other ends. Each discovery, which at first seemed a lucky one, turns out to be something already long known and traversed. Sometimes a discovery leads to new disappointments. At long last the man finds some unique idea and sets himself the goal of realising it. And, suddenly, it turns out that either this idea is not so new and unique or that it has been ``hanging in the air'', existing in the minds of many people for a long time already. In this case, the ``creator'' tries to attribute this idea and the end---its realisation---to himself, as his own great discovery; or the opposite, he immediately rejects it and its realisation on the grounds that it is the property of many (and he needs something super-original and unique). But the true artist takes this idea, sets himself its realisation as his end and goes towards this end in spite of everything, since he understands that the process of artistic creativity is not a manifestation of pure subjectivity but an expression and reflection of the profound processes of human life interpreted by the individual consciousness of the creator.
_-_-_^^1^^ Ibid., p. 189
__PRINTERS_P_35_COMMENT__ 2* 35It takes a colossal effort and great will, fortitude, patience and courage, let alone work, to achieve the planned end. In this sense the freedom of the artist appears as the fight against everything that interferes with his realising of the planned end and his following the demands of objective historical necessity. Real freedom of creativity is the artistic comprehending of historical necessity. In this sense the object determines the artist's subjective activity beyond all doubt and is the basis of his creativity.
In his practical activity man is confronted by the objective world and is dependent upon it for it determines his activity. Man's ends and his means for attaining them are determined by the laws of the external objective world. These laws are the basis of man's expedient activity, the basis of the cognition and reflection of the world by human consciousness.
Of course this cognition and reflection are never absolutely
complete and perfect. Rather they form an endless process of
man's coming closer to comprehending the laws of nature.
``Knowledge is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not a
simple, not an immediate, not a complete reflection, but the
process of a series of abstractions, the formation and development
of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc. (thought,
science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally, approximately,
the universal law-governed character of eternally moving and
developing nature. Here there are actually, objectively three
members: 1) nature; 2) human cognition = the human
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 182
36It is precisely in this sense that art is the ``meeting place" of nature and man and also one of the ways and means of cognition and self-consciousness. And if technique (mechanical, chemical, etc.), determined by the laws of nature, serves the practical ends of man, then the technique of art (the technique of painting, music, etc.) serves the artist both as the means to the cognition and reflection of nature and reality in general and as the means to selfexpression and self-knowledge. The affirmation according to which the artist who has not found his technique has not realised himself as an artist is undoubtedly true.
Lenin substantiated a thesis of major significance for
logic and the theory of cognition: ``If one considers the relation of
subject to object in logic, one must take into account also the
general premises of Being of the concrete subject (~=
In reference to the problems of artistic creativity one ought to remember that the essence of the latter consists, as has been mentioned more than once, not only in a reflection of the world, but also in the creation of new artistic values. The process of artistic creativity is exceptionally complicated and many-sided. It includes and combines theory and practice, history and project, the past, present and future, individual and social consciousness, logic and intuition, quest and results, a more or less adequate reflection of actuality and fantasy, reality and myth, etc. Artistic creativity is not only the object's influence on the subject but also the subject's influence on the object; as a result of artistic creativity both the object and the subject are transformed. Thus artistic creativity combines a number of functions: creative, aesthetic, ideological and educative and world outlook.
The process of creating works of art is impossible without a certain quantity of information (the artist must possess certain theoretical knowledge and practical habits). At the same time the creating of works of art means the creating of new information and _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 202
37 the enriching and developing (qualitatively and quantitatively) of information already possessed (the infinite process of discovery in composition, colour, sound, etc., etc.).We must stress here the fundamental significance for understanding the law-governed character of artistic creativity of Lenin's thesis on the role of signs and symbols in cognition. Lenin in his time sharply criticised the subjective idealistic theory of symbols which absolutised the important role signs and symbols play in human cognition. The theory of symbols, as Lenin noted, ``...implies a certain distrust of perception, a distrust of the evidence of our sense-organs. It is beyond doubt that an image can never wholly compare with the model, but an image is one thing, a symbol, a conventional sign, another. The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it `images'. 'Conventional sign', symbol, hieroglyph are concepts which introduce an entirely unnecessary element of agnosticism."^^1^^ On this basis some philosophers and aestheticians came to the mistaken conclusion that Lenin wy.s against any application of signs and symbols. In reality Lenin criticised the theory of symbolism and the ``Theory of Hieroglyphs" for their subjective idealism and for their substitution of objective reality by symbols, signs and hieroglyphs, emphasising at the same time that ``...there is nothing to be said against them in general. But 'against all Symbolism' it must be said that it sometimes is 'a convenient means of escaping from comprehending, stating and justifying the conceptual determinations' (Begriffsbestimmungen). But precisely this is the concern of philosophy."^^2^^ Lenin spoke out against the absolutisation and one-sided understanding and application of signs and symbols; he spoke out both against identification of the image and object and against the metaphysical alienation of one from the other, the contraposing of one to the other.
Lenin always emphasised the profoundly dialectical nature of the process of reflection: ``The coincidence of thought with the object is a process: thought (=man) must not imagine truth in the form of dead repose, in the form of a bare picture (image), pale (matt), without impulse, without motion, like a genius, like a number, like abstract thought."^^3^^ The process of reflection is realised continuously, in the eternal approximation to reality of the human consciousness. In this contradictory process there are relatively stable, ``set'' moments which can be fixed in the form of something constant, motionless, invariable. However these are precisely _-_-_
^^1^^ Ibid., Vol. 14, p. 235
^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 38, p. 119
~^^3^^Ibid., pp. 194--95
38 separate moments of the internally profound, contradictory process of reflection: the constant in human thought lies in that firmness and conviction with which man overcomes the contradiction of thought and object. ``Cognition,'' emphasised Lenin, ``is the eternal, endless approximation of thought to the object. The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not `lifelessly', not `abstractly',It must be noted immediately that there are no grounds for contraposing structural methods to Lenin's theory of reflection, for as has already been said, Lenin's theory of reflection in all definiteness admits the heuristic value of using symbols and signs not only in science and technology but also in human cognition in general, and this means also in the artistic cognition of reality and in art. However by virtue of the specific nature of art as a form of social consciousness signs and symbols play a special role in it. It is known that semiotics sets the study of all systems of signs as its task. Language is the classic example of a system of signs. However the multiform, actually existing links of the designated and designating are by no means reduced to those forms which are found in language.
Art as one of the forms of social consciousness cannot be reduced to language if only because any form of art is, in comparison with language, more closed (since works of art do not yield to an adequate ``translation'') and more open (since the sphere of the manifestation of the relationships of the beautiful is boundless). Any work of art and any form of art can have a symbolic and sign _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 195
39 function, but not one form of art and not one work of art can be reduced to that function if only because art cannot appear in the role of metalanguage; it cannot be the ``painting of painting'', or the ``music of music'', etc., not to mention the fact that art is not a ``phenomenon of language" in its own sense of the word since it does not possess the dual characteristics inherent in language:it has neither ``phoneme'' nor ``morpheme''. Since this is so, then one ought rather to compare art with speech and not with language. However in this case also one must take into account the exceptional historical character of the code applied in art and its social conditionally and determinateness as well.Lenin's theory of reflection makes use of the achievements of modern science; in their turn, modern science and art, scientific and artistic creativity are guided by the theory of reflection. The application of cybernetics, semiotics, structural analysis, and the theory of information enrich aesthetic research. However one must not elevate any of these concrete methods to the absolute, and all the more so try to substitute the dialectical method and the theory of reflection by them.
[40] __ALPHA_LVL2__ QUESTIONS OF HEGEL'S METHODOLOGYM. Ovsyannikov
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.Under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution questions on the methodology of theoretical research assume paramount importance. Organisation of scientific research, systematisation of the ever-increasing amount of information, application of new technology, the general complexity of social processes---all this inevitably raises in a new way the problems of the methodology and methods of scientific research.
Here the fact of the rapprochement of aesthetics with other sciences has important significance. It is well known that important discoveries are often made now by combining sciences. Today the aesthetician not only must know about the achievements of other sciences but also must use them fearlessly in his own research. Aesthetics studies problems that are also broached by physiology, psychology, the theory of information, ethics, and pedagogics. Hence the convergence of their research methods. However it should not be forgotten that aesthetics as a science has its own subject of research, its own specific system of categories, and its own specific tasks as well. Of course it is possible to use mathematical methods for analysing versification, however only within certain limits. At the present time linguistic, cybernetic, psychological and other methods are being applied to the research of the whole range of aesthetic problems, but even here a certain discretion is observed.
Aesthetics is a philosophical science and it cannot be reduced either to psychology, linguistics, sociology, or any other special branch of knowledge. It is equally incorrect to replace the scientific methodology of aesthetics by systematic methods.
41In my view there are two opposing tendencies, both equally dangerous for the development of the science of aesthetics: one of them orientates itself around creating abstract speculative conceptions, the other, around a denial of philosophical generalisations. To a certain extent interest in analysing the fundamental concepts of aesthetics (the beautiful, the tragic, the comic, the aesthetic ideal and others) has been waning now. These categories could be elaborated more extensively nowadays in the light of the maturity of philosophic and aesthetic knowledge, the practice of art, the latest events in social life, etc.
I am in complete agreement with Academician Yegorov, who wrote in his latest book: ``We still have aestheticians who, in setting off cognition against the process of creating artistic values, try to brush aside the basic question of philosophy, i.e.,dialectical and historical materialism. They believe that dialectic and materialist philosophy and scientific methodology can be replaced by systematic methods. This is a grave misconception which leads to positivism and subjectivism and to a negation of objective criteria in aesthetics, that is, in the final analysis, to the nullifying of aesthetics as a science."^^1^^
Elaboration of a scientific methodology for aesthetic research is directly linked to the problem of further developing the method of materialist dialectics, for dialectics is the general philosophical basis of both the natural and the social sciences.
Historical experience shows that the method of materialist dialectics, which is constantly being perfected in connection with the development of concrete sciences and social practice, is, in the true sense of the word, a scientific method safeguarding scholars against one-sidedness, subjectivism, and dogmatism.
Any further development of the dialectical method is inconceivable without a study of the history of dialectics. This history has its origins in ancient philosophy. However the great German thinker Hegel was of particular service in developing the dialectical mode of thinking. Hegel set forth in a general form the principles of the dialectical mode of thinking in his works on logic (in Die Wissenschaft der Logik, the first section of Encyklopadie der Philosophischen Wissenschaft en im Grundrisse, in Die Phanomenologie des Geistes, and in others). But we find a specific application of the dialectical method in those of Hegel's works in which he expounds his views on history, law, morality, the history of philosophy, and art.
Hegel's Vorlesungen \"uber die \"Asthetik are of special interest _-_-_
^^1^^ A. Yegorov, Problems of Aesthetics, Moscow, 1974, p. 45 (in Russian)
42 in the methodological aspect. They present his aesthetic conceptions extremely thoroughly. True, the philosopher also touched on the questions of aesthetics in other works (in Die Phanomenologie des Geistes, Vorlesungen tiber die Philosophic der Geschichte, Vorlesungen tiber die Philosophie der Religion, Die Philosophie des Geistes, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, and also in his critical essays on literature).I will briefly try to show how Hegel applied the basic categories and laws of dialectics in his aesthetics.
__*_*_*__Hegel's aesthetics is a high point in the development of classical German philosophy of art. The significance and progressive character of Hegel's conception of aesthetics consists not only in a profound theoretical analysis of world art but also in a new approach to the study of mankind's art. The philosopher presented art and all aesthetic practice in the form of a dialectical process. In considering the philosophy of history, law, the history of philosophy, religion, morality, etc., Hegel, in Engels' words, ``laboured to discover and demonstrate the pervading thread of development"^^1^^ in each of these different historical spheres.
On the whole, the principal achievement of Hegel's philosophy was the dialectical method. However Hegel's works bear the seal of unavoidable limitedness. He was bound not only by the level of scientific development in his time. Here his limitedness as an idealist philosopher is also evident. All those real processes which Hegel presented in the form of processes of dialectical development have, according to him, a dialectical development of the Idea as their basis. Human history itself, as well as its various aspects, including art, are treated as stages of the self-developing Idea. The starting point for all aspects of aesthetic analysis is the concept of the beautiful, from which subsequently various forms of the beautiful and also the artistic ideal in its development are drawn by deduction. In this way Hegel turned the real process of development of the practice of art upside down. Thus sketchiness and artificiality of speculative constructions become a characteristic feature of his analysis. He confined the artistic evolution of mankind to an abstract scheme: the symbolic, classical, and romantic forms of art.
_-_-_~^^1^^K. Marx and -F. Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 3, p. 341
43Hegel considered the ascent from the abstract to the concrete the most important methodological principle of scientific analysis. But by combining the ontological and gnosiological aspects, the philosopher portrayed the evolution of the process of cognition as the beginnings of the concrete itself, which is an obvious mystification and gives Hegel's dialectical method the traits of historic limitation.
Art, according to Hegel, is the self-revelation of the absolute mind in the form of contemplation. In a certain sense art is the age contemporary to it and perceived in a concrete sensuous form. A definite form of art is linked with a certain way of life of peoples, with their state system, form of government, morals, social life, science and religion. Thus art, in this manner, penetrates into all spheres of the life of the people.
While indicating art's ties with political history, state system and form of government, Hegel did not consider them to be an agent in the development of art, or, conversely, that art is an agent in the development of the above-mentioned features of the life of the people. He made a vague conjecture that art, morals, science, religion, state system, form of government, etc., all taken ``together have the same common roots''. How did he picture these ``common roots"?^^1^^ Hegel tried to answer this question by saying that these ``common roots" are the ``spirit of the times''. However his reference to the spirit of the times doesn't explain anything to us. And to explain it would have meant going beyond the limits of an idealistic understanding of history.
Thus the philosopher essentially did not understand the nature of the link between various forms of art and the era contemporary to them. However the very fact that he indicated the presence of this link is highly important.
If art is contingent upon historical conditions, then, consequently, it must undergo change with alterations in those conditions. It proves to be historically conditioned. Consequently, it is necessary to take a historical approach to art. This is now Hegel's concept of the historical evolution of art and the ideal of the beautiful was formed. By this Hegel laid the foundations of a concrete historical approach to the aesthetic practice of mankind. Individual elements of the historical analysis of art can already be found in Lessing, Herder, and Schiller. The concept of the historical method was consciously formulated by Hegel as the supreme methodological principle.
In view of this he criticised the empirical method of research, _-_-_
^^1^^ G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen \"uber die Geschichte der Philosophie, Leipzig, 1971, p. 149
44 that method which he perceived in Home, Batte, Hirt and others. At the same time he criticised Plato's abstract logical deductive method. Hegel posed the problem of uniting the empirical approach to art and theoretical generalisation. In Hegel this takes the specific form of a demand for the unity of the historical and logical approaches to analysing artistic practice.He examined all world art as being in the process of historical development, during the course of which takes place a changing of the various forms of art. The basis for the division of the various forms of art is the unequal correlation of the idea (content) in art and its form (sensuous image embodiment). The artistic ideal develops accordingly into special forms of the beautiful in art.
Hegel examined three stages of the relationship between idea and its formation. In the initial stage idea appeared in an abstract and one-sided form. Hegel called it the symbolic form of art. By this he historically meant the art of various peoples of the ancient East. According to him this art is distinguished by mysteriousness, loftiness, and an allegorical and symbolic character. The undeveloped content here did not find an adequate form as yet. Hence the fancifulness, grotesqueness, and fortuitousness of the link between idea and image, their disproportion. Hegel's negative evaluation of Oriental art is of a polemic nature. It is known that the Romantics, particularly the Schlegel brothers, tried to counterpose unconditionally Oriental art, with all its weaknesses, to ancient classical art. In debate with the Romantics Hegel defended the classical ideal born of ancient democracy. He considered Oriental symbolism and pantheism to be a product of despotic social order.
The second form of art is the classical form. Idea, or content, attained its appropriate substantiality here. This substantiality is adequately represented by image proportionate to free individual spirituality; i.e., by the human image immanent in the idea of spirituality. Hegel emphasised the humanistic and democratic character of classical art, which seemed to him as an unsurpassed and inimitable stage in mankind's artistic development. The idealisation of ancient democracy and ancient culture is the result of the fact that Hegel always held a feeling of admiration for the French revolution, which spread under the banner of democratic antiquity. In general, Hegel believed that the democratic nature of (he whole tenor of the ancient Greeks presented the most suitable material for artistic embodiment.
The third form of art is the romantic form. Here again the effected unity of idea and its outward appearance is destroyed and a return, though on a higher level, to the discrimination of these two aspects typical of symbolic art takes place. The content of romantic art (free specific spirituality) attains such a spiritual development 45 when the inner world seems as if to be celebrating the victory over the outer world and cannot, owing to its spiritual richness, find a proportionate sensuous embodiment any more. At this stage, according to Hegel, a liberating of the spirit from its sensuous encasement and a transition to new forms of selfcognition---religion, and subsequently philosophy---take place.
Romantic art begins with the Middle Ages, however Hegel also related Shakespeare. Cervantes, the artists of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the German Romantics to this. Romantic art is that stage in the evolution of art in which it exceeds its limits. From Hegel's point of view, this is the end of art in general, in the sense that ``neither a Homer, Sophocles, etc., neither a Dante, Ariosto, nor a Shakespeare could reappear in our time. That which was so significantly sung, which was so freely spoken, has been spoken once and for all; all this is the materials, means for their contemplation, comprehension, which have been sung once and for all~"^^1^^. However it does not follow that art, according to Hegel, totally disappears. Its significance, of course, lessens. Humanity finds other forms of cognising the world and expressing its aspirations and ideals. However art's exceeding its limits does not mean its complete disappearance, but only a change in its subject and its content. It frees itself of conventional historical material and traditions. The inner life of man, his joys and sufferings, his aspirations, deeds and destinies become the sphere of art. Thus socalled free art emerges out of the decay of romantic art. Hegel, on the one hand, saw its prototype in the creativity of his countrymen (F. Schiller, Goethe, and others), and on the other, he only vaguely anticipated it, although it already existed, for example, on English soil. In all probability Hegel did not know English art sufficiently well, and particularly the English novel of the 18th century as the most typical genre of the new art, otherwise his theory of the novel would have assumed a more specific and well-grounded character. On speaking of the typical conflicts depicted in the ``epic of bourgeois society'', as Hegel called the novel, he in essence relied basically on Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.
Thus Hegel, in his conception of the three stages in the evolution of art and the emergence of free art, effected a new approach to examining the art of mankind and analysed art as a dialectic process. Hegel began his analysis of each of art's forms with a delineation of the general state of the world. This especially applies; to classical and romantic art. He pointed out that the so-called age of heroes, i.e., antiquity, is the most favourable for artistic _-_-_
^^1^^ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke, Bd. 14, Vorlesungen ilber die Asthetik, II, Frankfurt am Main, 1970, S. 238
46 portrayal. The modern state is defined as prosaic and little suitable for art. Later Hegel examined situations, clashes, and characters in (he process of their historical development, insofar as they reflect the historically changing stages in mankind's evolution. Thus he singled out the basic categories of art from the point of view of historical progress, as they arc not at all given and set for all time.Hegel regarded each new stage in the development of art as a new qualitative formation. The transition from one form of art to another is not a process of purely quantitative growth but rather a gap, a leap. This is how ancient Greek art replaces Oriental art, and modern, romantic art---ancient Greek.
This process is of a progressive nature, however at the same time it includes contradictory elements---there are some losses along with the positive results and achievements. We already observe a definite disproportion within the bounds of the general progress of culture. For example, the growth of scientific knowledge is accompanied by a loss of the live integral perception of the world peculiar to artistic cognition. There is a similar disproportion in the development of art itself. It was already noted above that the classical form of art appears in Hegel as the height of mankind's artistic culture inasmuch as here a complete harmony between idea and the form of its expression is present. (The portrayal of gods in ancient sculpture is a vivid example of this harmony.) However this equilibrium of matter and spirit doesn't last long. A further growth of the spirituality of the individual as an object of artistic portrayal occurs. The progress of romantic art in comparison with classical consists precisely in the fact that the new art reflects another, richer stage in mankind's development. However simultaneously a break of the classical equilibrium between content and its outer design takes place. In the final analysis the stated disharmony leads to a decay of the artistic form of cognition as such.
The observed disproportion has the most diverse forms of manifestation. And so, Hegel spoke of the uneven development of the forms and genres of art. The definite forms of art predominate in certain historical periods (sculpture---in the age of antiquity; painting, music and poetry---in the era contemporary to him). Within the bounds of one and the same art form can be observed, in its turn, an unevenness expressed in the prevalence of one genre or other, for example epic poem---in the era of epic antiquity, or the novel^-in modern art. Hegel linked some genres only with definite stages in the development of the history of mankind. For example the Homeric epic, according to Hegel, was possible only in the ``age of heroes''. Incidentally Lessing had already understood this and considered all attempts at creating a new epic in modern 47 conditions futile (Voltaire's La Henriade, Klopstock's Messias).
Hegel was a long way off from romantic relativity and subjectivism when speaking of and evaluating the development of the artistic ideal and the replacement of various forms, types and genres of art. It is known that the romantics proclaimed the complete equality of all trends and styles in art. Primitive art, religious art of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque all had equal value for them. But Hegel used objective criteria in his approach to evaluating various forms, styles, and trends in art. He proceeded first and foremost from the content and evaluated different stages in and forms of the development of art from the standpoint of how profoundly a certain stage in mankind's development was revealed in them. As Hegel repeatedly noted, it is namely in this that the intransient value of famous works of art consists, beginning with the Homeric epic and ending with Shakespeare, Cervantes, Schiller, Goethe, etc.
All art forms---architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry---are analysed by Hegel not only from the general theoretical standpoint but also in the historical aspect. Each corresponding section ends with a historical excursus. Let us take painting as an example. At first Hegel described the general characteristics of painting, defined its content, the specifics of its modes of graphic expression, the principles of artistic portrayal, and its genres and forms, and then examined it in the light of historical development. He gave a comparatively detailed analysis of painting in Byzantium, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. Moreover he showed how painting was gradually freed from religious subjects, how secular content began to occupy a more and more significant position in the creativity of masters, and how human nature, man, his inner world and his emotions became more and more the centre of artistic < portrayal. All this is well evident in the painting of the Netherlands.
The philosopher carried out an analogical analysis in relation to the art of language. Hegel first of all established the distinction between the art of poetry and the art of prose and examined the peculiarities of the content of the belles-lettres, their language, genres and forms. Beginning with the characteristics of the epic, he determined that general state of the world which demands the epic form for its portrayal. Hegel showed that the epic appeared only under definite historical conditions. In this connection he traced the historical development of the epics of the Jews, Arabs, Persians, ancient Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavian nations, as well as the epic works of the Middle Ages. With changes in historical 48 conditions the epic either disappeared completely or became radically modified, acquiring new qualitative features which we have already noted in connection with the analysis of the novel as an epic of .bourgeois society. Hegel did similar research in relation to lyric poetry and drama.
Guided by the principle of the unity of the historical and the logical, Hegel characterised the cardinal categories of aesthetics---the beautiful, the sublime, the tragic and the comic. These key conceptions, as Hegel strove to point out, are formed on the basis of historical cognition of the evolution of art. Unlike Kant, Hegel did not give us an abstract system of aesthetic categories. It is as if Hegel crystallised the above categories out of a realisation of the process of development of artistic practice itself and characterised them in the course of examining definite stages in the evolution of art. For example, the category of the sublime is elucidated in connection with an analysis of Oriental art; the category of the beautiful---in connection with an interpretation of the art of antiquity. As to the tragic and the comic, they are interpreted partly by a characteristics of corresponding genres; on the whole, the tragic and the comic appear in Hegel as concepts reflecting definite types of conflicts specific to the various stages in the development of the history of mankind. Tragic and comic collisions are characteristic of moments of historical crisis and reflect the real process of history.
Thus Hegel's basic categories of aesthetics appear not in the form of set ``tables'' but as key elements in the cognition of the process of development of aesthetic practice.
The problem of contradiction occupies one of the central if not the central position in Hegel's philosophy, and particularly in his studies on logic. He saw contradiction as the source of selfpropulsion and self-development. ``Only when they attain an extreme degree of contradiction, do varied [elements] become active and vital in relation to each other and acquire in it that negativeness which is the immanent pulsation of self-propulsion and vitality."^^1^^ The philosopher also applied the universal principle of contradiction to artistic phenomena.
The changing of art forms from symbolic through .classical to romantic is stipulated by the contradiction between constantly changing content and relatively stable form. Content, or, according to Hegel's terminology, the Idea develops more and more along the line of specific definition. In symbolic art, i.e., the art of the _-_-_
^^1^^ G.W.F. Hegel, Werke, Bd. b,Die Wissenschaft der Logik, II, Frankfurt am Main, 1969, S. 78
49 ancicnt East, it appears in an abstract and undeveloped form. Then it reaches that stage of concreteness in which it can find a proportionate sensuous expression for itself. Further development along the path of concrete definition leads to the fact that the idea already cannot on the whole be portrayed in concrete sensuous forms. Now concept rather than sensuous image is required for its expression. Inasmuch as here, in accordance with Hegel, the spirit feels itself on home ground, i.e., in the element of pure thought, then at this stage content and form coincide completely. Hegel clearly mystified contradiction, as becomes evident later, and presented it in the form of a conflict between matter and spirit, between thought and emotion, between reason and the completeness of the integral spiritual life of the individual.All this mystification of the real problem is conditioned by the initial objective-idealistic principles of Hegel's philosophy on the whole. The point is that Hegel deduced contradiction from other logical concepts-identity, difference, contrast---and besides this, he resolved, or in simpler words, reconciled it in its essence. Instead of interpreting movement from contradiction, Hegel deduced contradiction itself from logical movement. The question takes on a new form in relation to art: what stipulates movement from one content to another? Hegel took this movement as fact. Meanwhile it should have been explained as the presence of contradiction in content itself. But we don't find this in the philosopher. Moreover Hegel, as evident from what was said earlier, developed the conception of the reconciliation of opposites, their neutralisation. On this point the basic contrast between Hegel's idealistic dialectics and the Marxist dialectical method is particularly clearly revealed. But nevertheless Hegel's application of the principle of contradiction in the analysis of art is a notable scientific contribution in the sense of an elaboration of a methodology of social cognition.
In this connection let us examine that principle of which I spoke earlier. Hegel explained the replacing of one set of art forms by another, i. e.,the appearance of new forms, genres, and styles to replace others, by the objective movement of art's content. This means that different art forms are not created through arbitrariness of creative subjectivity but are determined by the indicated process. The true artist differs from mediocrity in the fact that he is aware of the emerging contradictions between the nascent ideological content of art and its form already subject to ossification. This emerged contradiction is the basis of that ideological struggle which breaks out in definite periods of history---the struggle for the regeneration of art, for new art forms 50 and genres, for new stylistic forms corresponding to the new vital content.
I already spoke earlier of the fact that the pithy components of art, i.e., situations, clashes, actions and characters, alter with changes in the general state of the world. Their transformation is conditioned by the presence of internal contradictions in them. In the early stages of the development of art these contradictions are still hidden. Therefore representations of the period of the dawning of art are of an immobile, set nature. As an example or illustration Hegel named early temple images. Then the transition from rest to movement and expression begins to show itself. Thus if Egyptian gods are depicted with feet drawn together, heads motionless and arms closely adjacent to the body, then in early Greek art, even though gods were depicted in a state of immobility, their bodies take positions characteristic of movement. These images of the gods were still of a reserved disposition and internal clashes were not yet expressed here. Later on, situations reproduced in art take on a character fraught with conflicts, which contain the rudiments of action. Clashes and conflicts of real forces appear first in a primitive form. For example their basis lies in vital blood relationships. The simple, natural fact of blood relationship can serve as the basis for a struggle for succession to the throne. Such types of conflicts become more complicated and cross over into the sphere of social and moral relations. They can assume an antagonistic character as we observe in, for example, the tragedy Antigone. All the internal movement of the content of art, as Hegel showed, is based on a clash of the hostile forces present in certain situations. Not only individuals, but also entire nations can become involved in these conflicts, as Homer's epic bears witness. A general conflict of this type serves as the prerequisite for the development of those more particular multiform conflicts depicted in the Iliad.
Thus the contradiction internally inherent to the given situation must be acknowledged as the source for the development of action, one of the most important elements of artistic content. It is given concrete expression in artistic ideas, in definite characters, in definite individuals, in the clash of various moral principles. All artistic embodiment is, in the final analysis, nothing more than the exposure in a concrete sensuous form of those great conflicts and contradictions peculiar to the given era. Not only is action revealed through contradiction, but the characters portrayed in art also, according to Hegel, are the result of contradictory development. It is as though the tendency of the contradictory development of the times were also crystallised in them. For not some form of abstract principles but rather people with definite traits of character 51 personifying real historical forces clash in the history of humanity.
In analysing the phenomena of art Hegel also applied the dialectical philosophical categories worked out by him--- phenomenon and essence, content and form, chance and necessity, and necessity and freedom. Hegel didn't absolutise a single one of the laws of dialectics, a single one of its categories; he saw scientific truth as a sort of many-sided whole. To him art was a complex phenomenon, and as such it must be cognised with the help of the sum total of the basic dialectical principles of analysis.
In this lies Hegel's superiority over all the modern philosophical and aesthetic theories of idealistic trend. As a rule they absolutise one or another of the methodological principles or devices as, for example, structural analysis, the quantitative approach, the psychological approach, and others. Hegel's dialectical method is directed against one-sidedness, against the absolutising of separate elements. The great philosopher treated art as a very complex social phenomenon demanding a comprehensive analysis. He saw art first and foremost as cognitive activity,'but at the same time analysed it from the standpoint of structure and social function as well. Nor did he lose sight of creative subjectivity as well as the public which perceives aesthetic values.
As already noted at the very outset, Hegel's dialectics is an idealistic dialectics. It bears the mark of a historical limitedness engendered by its age. K. Marx, F. Engels, and V. I. Lenin radically revised Hegel's dialectics and, in the words of Marx, set it right side up. They produced materialist dialectics, a great tool for the cognition and transformation of the world.
The dialectical method is being developed together with the development of science and society on the whole. But in our further advancement a mental return to primary sources is necessary in order to perceive, take into account and creatively assimilate the experience of the past again and again. Creative understanding and mastering of the positive aspects of Hegel's work are prerequisites for our progress in perfecting the methodology of modern scientific research and in forecasting the development of world aesthetics. Hegel's legacy is relevant to this day.
[52] __ALPHA_LVL1__ AestheticsA. Zis
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.Defining the social essence of art consists not only in clarifying the object of reflection and the means of reflection (the gnosiological aspect), but also in eliciting its role and place in the life of society and the content of those social needs and interests with which its existence and the trend of its development are connected (the sociological aspect). The elucidation of the nature of art in its sociological aspect and the characterising of it as a bearer of a definite ideology complement in an essential way the eliciting of the essence of art on the gnosiological level as a reflection of social being; in this the active role of the subject of reflection in the process of artistic creation is revealed with particular depth. The combination of all these factors finds expression in the axiological approach to the analysis of art.
In the view of a number of researchers, the unique character of artistic reflection (as opposed to scientific reflection, for example) consists in the fact that it is combined with a value-bearing approach to the assimilation of phenomena. However, such an approach is by no means characteristic only of artistic assimilation but also enters into the process of scientific cognition. Eliciting the specific features of artistic cognition is, therefore, coupled with revealing the nature of artistic value itself. In this context we distinguish between an evaluation of real phenomena by art and an examination of art itself as an artistic value.
The axiological aspects in studying the nature of art is necessary, but by no means because the concept of ``reflection'', 'token by itself, does not contain an active, creative element. Precisely the reverse is true: it is the active nature of reflection that stimulated us 55 to interpret theoretically the axiological principle as an indispensable element in artistic cognition.
It must be noted that in the work of a number of proponents of the axiological conception of art such concepts as ``artistic value" and ``artistic truth" are divorced from and opposed to each other. ``Artistic truth" in this view is regarded as a non-essential concept, lacking the significance of an artistic value. However the axiological approach can be fruitful only provided that it is not opposed to the gnosiological approach but proceeds, on the contrary, from a recognition of the organic unity of cognition and evaluation.
The classic works of Marxist-Leninist philosophy have always regarded art as an artistic value and brought to light the ideological and aesthetic evaluation of the phenomena portrayed in artistic works through analysing the latter. In Lenin's works on Tolstoy, which represent a model for the application of the theory of reflection to the analysis of concrete artistic phenomena, an axiological element is contained within the very combination of the two ideas of ``mirror'' and ``Russian revolution''. By defining the work of the great writer as a mirror of the Russian revolution, Lenin elicits the value-bearing character of Tolstoy's art and evaluates it.
Spiritual values embody the aims and ideals of people. In a class society art expresses those spiritual and aesthetic values which promote awareness of the community of interests of particular classes and serve as a support in the class struggle. Art reflects reality through the prism of class interests; it expresses and defends the interests of a class and it is in this that its ideological function consists.
In emphasising the historical and class roots of art, MarxismLeninism does not detach it from the sphere of those unchanging values which are common to all mankind. When, for example, Plekhanov said that Skryabin's music was ``his time expressed in sounds'', he added that ``when the temporary and transient finds expression in the work of a great artist, it acquires a permanent significance and becomes unchanging''.^^1^^ Thus, Plekhanov both evaluated the work of this outstanding artist and expressed a more general idea which is very important for the understanding of art as a social and historical phenomenon.
Social consciousness does not mean simply ideas belonging to a particular time and to particular social formations. Its _-_-_
^^1^^ G. V. Plekhanov, Literature and Aesthetics, Vol. II, Moscow, 1958, p. 495 (in Russian)
56 development contains ``eternal'' principles producing contunuity in the spiritual development of humanity. The scale and character of these universal elements in various forms of social consciousness, such as philosophy, morals and art, are not identical. They occupy a larger place in art than in other areas of spiritual life.Life in its many facets and the basic trends of each era's historical development are reflected in the whole complex of the forms of social consciousness. None of these forms, taken by itself, can exhaust the abundance of links and relationships of life. Forms of social consciousness do not develop in isolation, free from links with one another, but enter into definite relationship, enriching one another. Substantive interrelationships arise between art and other forms of ideology.
Marxist-Leninist aesthetics fully takes into account the specific features of art while at the same time bringing together art and politics, art and philosophy, art and morals, etc. In the absence of links with other forms of ideology, art cannot fulfil its social mission. Some of the more fundamental links and relationships between art and other forms of ideology are described below.
Art and Politics. The problem of the correlation between art and politics has most frequently been resolved in idealist aesthetics in one way only: namely, by the proposition that art and politics are completely different by nature and fulfil completely different functions. Those supporting this proposition refer to the fact that the object of politics is temporary and transient, while that of art is eternal and universal. They define art and politics as incompatible and even mutually inimical phenomena. The well-known aesthetic philosopher, Benedetto Croce, seeking to isolate art as absolutely autonomous and absolutely free activity from everything practical, rates any art that is connected with politics as quasi-art. The British aesthetician, R.G.Collingwood, a follower of Croce, develops the latter's ideas, and, while disclaiming ``hostility'' to an art dedicated to the service of politics, or even ``inspired by the wish to inculcate communistic sentiments'', nevertheless qualifies such art only as ``magical art" rather than as art proper. In Collingwood's view, any aspiration on the part of the creator of any work to evoke definite political emotions among his audience can, at best, be ``serviceable'' to politics but not to artistic creation.^^1^^ The involvement of hundreds of millions of people in active political life is a characteristic feature of our age. In capitalist countries the class struggle in all its forms, including that of ideology, is growing ever more acute. Under these conditions the _-_-_
^^1^^ R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, Oxford, 1947, pp. 278, 280
57 organic link of art and politics is becoming especially evident, and denial of this link and propagation of the idea that art is `` independent" of politics is nothing more than a way of defending reactionary political ideas.The entire experience of art throughout the world testifies to the fact that it is not ``independent'' art but, on the contrary, militant and publicistic art, closely bound up with life and subject to the influence of advanced political ideas, that finds a place in the treasure-house of artistic culture. It is quite natural that even foreign artists far removed from communist ideology are beginning with increasing frequency to take the view that in contemporary art a truthful psychological image cannot be created if its creator does not take into account in his work social interrelationships, the product of which is human personality.
The link between art and politics and the dependence of art on politics enter organically into the consciousness of contemporary man: this is especially true of every conscientious artist. The poet Alexander Blok called upon Russian intellectuals to ``listen to the revolution''; today, Cuban writer Virgilio Pinera states the need for his artistic confreres to set their watches by the clock of the revolution.
As early as 1928, the outstanding Polish theatrical figure Leon Schiller wrote, in expounding what was both his artistic and his social credo:
``Direction?
``To the left and straight ahead.
``Orientation?
``Present-day life. Its needs and aspirations. The struggle for the moral and social structure of tomorrow.''
Leon Schiller called upon artists to draw their inspiration from a feeling of responsibility not to ``eternity'' but to the masses of their own time, whose service was the function of art.
The de-ideologisation of art, an idea very characteristic of bourgeois aesthetics, has already been subjected to critical examination earlier in this article. However, another trend has also become apparent in bourgeois aesthetic writings in recent years (albeit incorrectly interpreted)---that of the politicisation of art. From this point of view ``Art and Politics'', a paper read by Mikel Dufrenne at the 7th International Congress of Aesthetics, is highly characteristic. Dufrenne correctly notes that in our time the relationship of art and politics has become a topical issue and that the politicisation of artistic creation is not infrequently attracting the artists themselves. His resolution of this issue, which he interprets in a nihilistic rather- than a revolutionary way, is, more than 58 anything else, Marcusian in character; however, in the given instance the point to be noted is not the way in which the issue is resolved, but the very fact of a definite turning away from an apolitical approach towards politics, which reflects both the growing part played by political ideas in the spiritual life of contemporary man and the significantly closer relationship of art and politics.
The position in men's lives occupied today by politics has changed. The opportunities for separating man's ``everyday'', private life from the central problems of politics are becoming more and more limited while man himself is increasingly becoming a ``political animal'', even in his private life. It is important to note further that contemporary political life is permeated with drama and characterised by the fervour with which issues are debated, thereby providing extremely fertile soil for art.
Such essential phenomena of contemporary art as political cinema, political theatre and political songs are highly typical in this respect. We are not talking here simply of art that is connected with politics, that cannot be separated from it and which is developing under its influence: in this sense, any art form, even those which seem very far removed from the most immediate problems of life, is always ``political''. By political theatre, political cinema or political literature we mean the direct treatment by art of political problems and the incorporation of these problems into the artistic fabric of the work.
The struggle between progressive artists and proponents of ``pure'' art ultimately reflects the struggle between classes. Art, in Gorky's famous phrase, is always a battle ``for'' and ``against''. It follows from this that the indivisibility of art and politics stems from the very nature of art.
In Soviet society there is a firm and deep link between art and politics. Under the conditions of socialism politics exercises a fruitful influence on the development of art. The policies of the Communist Party represent a concentrated expression of the social interest. In a socialist society literature and art are organically linked to the life of the people and its fundamental aims and interests. Politics guides creative practice, helping it to reflect truthfully the life of the people and artistically comprehend the principal trends in the life of society.
It is noteworthy in this connection that the well-known Soviet literary historian, Viktor Shklovsky, after rejecting ideas of the selfcontained value of art following long and painful reflection, arrived in later years at the clear conviction that ``the colour of the banner means everything in poetry. The colour of the banner is the colour 59 of the soul, while the so-called soul has its second embodiment, too, in art''.^^1^^
While upholding the dependence of art on politics, MarxistLeninist aesthetics at the same time opposes any kind of simplification in interpreting this dependence. Simplification and vulgarisation here find expression in the fact that art is viewed simply as propaganda for political ideas and the content of art is reduced to the proclamation of political slogans alone. It is in just such an assertion of the simple and rigid link between politics and art that dogmatism in aesthetics shows itself. Dogmatists believe that the political and the artistic coexist in a work as two independent principles, the nature of the former defining the value of the latter: ``first the political, then the artistic" is their watchword. This kind of crude approach is inimical to the nature of art. Art is not political ideology with an artistic veneer. Political meaning is inherent in the very artistic fabric of a work; it does not precede the creation of that fabric, nor does it have a separate life within it. ``A writer's talent,'' A.I. Mikoyan observed in conversation with Ernest Hemingway, ``his honesty, truthfulness and objectivity lead to the best of his works' acquiring a political resonance".^^2^^
A crude, dogmatic conception of the link between art and politics is profoundly alien to the Marxist-Leninist understanding of art. Marx and Engels themselves protested against transforming the characters of fiction into mere mouthpieces for the spirit of the time and denied the admissibility of substituting the didactic illustration of political slogans for a true and diverse representation of reality. This, after all, inevitably leads to a reduction in artistic cogency and, consequently, to a reduction in the social effectiveness of art. The social and political significance of Soviet art is determined by its truthfulness and by its faithful representation and searching analysis of dominant trends in the life of our society.
Art and Morals. The nature and objectives of art and, equally, the nature and objectives of morals lead necessarily to their influencing each other. Art is no more to be separated from morals than it is from politics.
At the centre both of morals and art invariably lie problems that may be summed up under the formula: ``the individual and society''. From this it follows that moral issues are always intimately bound up with art. The ethical is not ``added on" to the _-_-_
~^^1^^ Viktor Shklovsky, Fiction, Thoughts and Analyses, Moscow, 1961, p.~9~
^^2^^ Quoted in: Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast (in the Russian translation), Moscow, 1965, p. 143
60 aesthetic: it is an organic part of art, arising from its humanistic nature. The aesthetic embraces the ethical.As the great Russian critic, Belinsky, made clear as early as the last century, art, being closely linked to morals, should not represent abstract vices and virtues. The objective of art is to bring out social types and shape living human characters; but, in representing people as members of society, art, by the same token, also characterises society itself and consequently represents morals and manners and assists in affirming some moral principles and counteracting others.
Since the principal subject of art is always man in society and the relationship of man to man always concerns art, the latter, by the very fact of reflecting social relationships, resolves moral issues by means specific to art. The moral content of art is, consequently, not simply the result of the external influence of morals as a supposedly extra-aesthetic factor. On the contrary, the aesthetic embraces the ethical as a natural and inalienable element.
When Tolstoy was writing the novel Resurrection, he said that he was composing an open letter to all men. Every example of great art represents such a letter and in virtue of the fact that it poses questions bearing on life and human relationships which are common and important to everyone, art cannot but be bound up with morals.
Art is the affirmation of definite viewpoints on life. The progressive or reactionary nature of a particular viewpoint on life affirmed by art is conditioned by the character of an aesthetic ideal and by the truthful reflection of life. Deviation in art from truth to life is inevitably combined with the propagation of amoral principles and leads to the forfeiture by art of its ethical significance.
The characters in Soviet art are ``eternal companions" of Soviet man. Each affirms in a unique way the finest qualities of the morality and psychology of the new man, born of the socialist age. Fadeyev's Levinson and Nikolai Ostrovsky's Pavel Korchagin, Sholokhov's Davydov and Nagulnov and Andrei Sokolov,. Zoya and the young heroes of Krasnodon of the last war are people who belong to different generations but share a common fate. They have entered into the'consciousness of tens of millions of people in Soviet society. Socialist art is a mighty force in the moral education of the people.
The radical contrast between the humanism of the socialist world and the inhumanity of the world of class and other antagonisms is accentuated by the high moral note of art in the socialist countries and the amoralism of contemporary reactionary art.
61Art and Philosophy. A direct expression of philosophical views can be found in such works as Goethe's Faust and Tolstoy's War and Peace. In these works purely philosophical problems relating to the nature of the world around us and the essence of being are woven into the fabric of the fictional narrative. But the artist does not always turn directly to philosophical problems. There are many works, in all media, that are in no way directly linked to philosophy. However, art is always internally bound up with philosophy; it contains a definite philosophical meaning and expresses a definite social ideal.
Every truly artistic work possesses a sub-text: the artist aims not only at showing life as it is, but also at evoking thought about it and pointing to what it ought to be. This sub-text is also an expression of a social ideal which, whatever the subject represented, always makes its presence felt in art. The philosophical aspect is not something extrinsic to art, ``put into" a work as it were; art is philosophical by its very nature, since it always conducts a dialogue with man on the meaning of life, helping him to penetrate the concealed essence of being and influencing the formation of his view of the world.
The philosophical depth of a work depends to a considerable extent on its creator's view of the world. The more progressive the social, philosophical and aesthetic views of the artist, the stronger the grounds for expecting artistic generalisation of a truly philosophical character and significance in his work. Art, which forms men's ideals in the light of a definite view of the world, function as the distinctive artistic philosophy of an age. It is important to note this circumstance, the more so that philosophical systems often exercise their influence on people indirectly, through art, rather than directly. Philosophical ideas in the medium of art frequently possess greater vitality than they do in their abstract form. The essential factor is not that particular artists, writers, etc. are directly acquainted with individual philosophical schools and ideas, but rather the general philosophical ``climate'' in which the view of the world of those who create works of art is formed.
Politics, morals, philosophy and art are forms of social consciousness intimately related to one another. This is because, first and foremost, all these forms, in various ways and through various relationships, perceive one and the same reality or different manifestations and aspects of the same reality and aim at influencing it. The link between art and both philosophy and science expresses its cognitive function, while its link with politics and morals expresses its ideological and educative function. In its relationships with these forms, art is revealed as artistic cognition 62 and the embodiment of scientific, philosophical, moral and political ideas. Inasmuch as these functions are inseparable, art is always akin to the above-mentioned forms of consciousness. Its relationship to religion is, however, different.
Art and Religion are forms of social consciousness which Marx characterised as practical modes of spiritual activity and between which he thereby elicited a certain similarity (for example, the emotionality inherent in both, the characteristic part played by imagination in their formation, etc.). However, the nature of emotionality and the character of imagination differ fundamentally between art and religion. Idealist aesthetics seeks in every way possible to bring about a rapprochement between art and religion on the specific basis that the imagination plays an important role both in religion and in art. However, such a rapprochement is without foundation. Ludwig Feuerbach wrote in his Vorlesungen tiber das Wesen der Religion that the distinction between art and religion was that art did not require its creations to be presented as reality. Art is a transformed picture of the real world. Religious imagination, however, is identified with reality itself. As we know, this distinction was noted sympathetically in Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks. Religious imagination gives a distorted conception of the world; artistic imagination, however, represents a powerful means of perceiving the world. Thus, religion and art are opposed; an opposition which, in a certain sense, is analogous to the opposition existing between religion and science.
Art reveals the truth of life; like science, it is an expression of man's domination of reality. Religion, on the contrary, is an expression not of strength, but of man's weakness, and reflects a situation in which the forces of nature and society dominate man and not vice versa. Art and science are related by their ability to reflect objective truth and express man's dominance over the surrounding world, which in this respect places the former in opposition to religion.
The proposition that art and religion are opposed may seem, at first glance, to contradict the familiar fact that until the 17th century art to a great extent developed in direct connection with various forms of religion and was heavily influenced by it. Thus, all ancient art was based on mythology (and mythology lay at the foundation of pagan religions); almost all medieval art, with the exception of a comparatively small branch of profane art, was subordinate to the church; and the overwhelming majority of even the brilliant works of the Renaissance were linked to religious subjects. These subjects frequently recurred in the art of later periods, as, for instance, in the famous picture by the outstanding 63 Russian painter of the 19th century, Alexander Ivanov, Christ Appears to the People, and Nikolai Ghe's What Is the Truth?
None of this in any way contradicts the fact that artistic and religious ideology are essentially opposed. However, the facts that have been noted must be correctly explained. Certain common features between art and religion gave rise to the possibility of their interaction; when the artistic principle dominated in this process of interpenetration works of genuine artistic values emerged in the form of mythology and religion.
Artistic development was for many centuries inseparably linked to religion for a number of reasons.
Firstly, pre-Christian religion took the form of mythology, and mythology was not only an expression of man's helplessness in the face of the elements, but also represented the first attempts of artistic treatment of life in man's imagination. Mythology represented both religion and an expression of the artistic creativity of peoples at the first stages of historical development. Ancient art could, therefore, draw on mythology for images and subjects. Marx called mythology the soil and arsenal of ancient art. Art leaned on mythology not because the former was nourished by religion but because the latter possessed, bound up inseparably with religious conceptions, a broader extra-religious content.
For a certain period of time Christian mythology, too, played an analogous role in the development of art.
Secondly, the development of art within the framework of religion during a long period of history is to be explained by the political dominance of the church. During the Middle Ages the church maintained control over all social relationships. The religious view of the world left a deep imprint on the entire life of society. Progressive men of learning and thinkers struggled against the dominance of the church, religious scholasticism and dogmatism; and this battle was also conducted in the field of art. But art was, as a whole, shackled by church dominance and possessed, in consequence, extremely limited opportunities for development outside the framework of religion, orders placed by the church, and church control. However, during the Renaissance, when new ideas and new conceptions of the world began to be reflected in art, the latter affirmed humanist, anti-clerical and antireligious principles.
The power possessed by the art of the past and its immutable significance are determined by the truth of life contained within it and not by the religious colouration characteristic of particular periods of its development. Thus, it is quite evident that the 64 numerous ``holy families'', ``last suppers'', ``depositions'' and other traditional religious subjects that feature in the art of the Renaissance serve as occasion for the expression of joy and happiness, pain and suffering: the light and shade of man's life.
The struggle of the young revolutionary bourgeoisie against religion and the church also had an extremely positive impact on the development of art. By the 17th century it had almost completely freed itself from the encasement of religion and mythology and was beginning to reproduce reality without resort to mythological allegories. This extended the range of phenomena available to art to an extraordinary extent.
It is true that in more recent times a link with religion has been retained within certain trends in art and in the work of individual artists, but this link has now acquired a completely new meaning. In the modern age art addresses religion at the invariable cost of a greater or lesser negative effect on creativity. Those facets of the work even of creative geniuses such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky which are linked to religious questions and an urge to find a solution to life's conflicts in the sphere of religion represent at the same time the weakest aspects of their work. Realism, the greatest achievement of art, is, by its nature, incompatible with religious ideology. Great realistic art destroys rather than strengthens religious feeling.
A qualification must be entered at this point. The above does not exclude the possibility, even today, of utilising---in certain cases---mythological and religious images and subjects in the interests of reproducing reality in art. The Mexican painter, Jose Orozco, for example, has used a religious subject, ``Christ Destroys His Cross'', for one of his works; but in his painting one sees not a god but a living man, endowed with a man's earthly strength. Many other examples could be adduced.
__*_*_*__Thus, to recapitulate, art develops in inseparable interdependence with other forms of social consciousness. To sever these links is to deprive it of its life blood. Nothing remains of art if it is stripped of its cognitive significance, its ideological trend, its moral problems and its philosophical attitude to the world but pure form, which, by virtue of the very fact that it is ``pure'', ceases even to be form and disintegrates into a chaos.
But while emphasising the interdependence subsisting between art and other forms of social consciousness in respect of content, __PRINTERS_P_67_COMMENT__ 3---121 65 Marxist-Leninist aesthetics notes simultaneously the relative independence of art. Art cannot be transformed into the popularisation or visual demonstration of scientific propositions or an abstract declaration of political or moral ideas. It is a selfcontained and specific form of human creative activity, reflecting life in the images of art. Art cannot be made auxiliary to other forms of social consciousness. Its use in an illustrative or declaratory role is fatal to the quality of the artistic and leads to the vulgarisation of art.
The cognitive function of art and its function in the ideological and educative sphere are performed in the context of an organic link with art's aesthetic function. The latter is specific to art and finds expression in two important consequences.
Firstly, no form of social consciousness is capable of exercising an aesthetic influence on people to such an extent and so comprehensively as art. Through its decisive influence on the formation of aesthetic feelings, art teaches people to discern the beauty contained within the phenomena they encounter in life, to enjoy this beauty, introduce it into life and to create according to the laws of beauty. The aesthetic function of art consists in helping people to cultivate a definite social and aesthetic ideal and develop their artistic capacities. Lenin said that art must awaken artists among the people. Art gives rise to an inspiration and an emotion in man that are akin to the inspiration and emotion of the artist, the creator of the work of art. ``I, too, am an artist!" exclaimed Corregio ecstatically before a painting by Raphael. The same feeling seizes everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, when gripped by the powerful fascination of art. In its development of a creative relationship to life, its creative capacity to transform life and ability to comprehend concretely and in their totality the essence of the phenomena of reality and evaluate them aesthetically art is beyond comparison with any other form of social consciousness.
Secondly, the cognitive function of art and its function in the ideological and educative sphere are performed not apart from but through the aesthetic influence of art. This means that the functions of art cannot be mechanically broken down. Just as art cannot perform its ideological and aesthetic function if it does not truthfully reflect life, so, too, the truth of life is unattainable in art if life is not reproduced according to the laws of art itself and the work of art has not acquired the status of an aesthetic value.
[66] __ALPHA_LVL2__ ART AS A SOCIO-AESTHETIC TOTALITYY. Yakovlev
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.Aesthetic analysis of art is closely tied up with an understanding of the typology and structure of the personality of modern man. In a socialist society objective conditions exist for the development of universality of the individual, for his integrated and harmonious being. At the same time, under the conditions of bourgeois society the tensions of everyday life filled with social contradictions and the negative consequences of scientific and technological progress can destroy spiritual traditions and lead to the loss of value reference points and, ultimately, to the destruction of the integrity of the individual.
Man, in contemporary bourgeois society, experiences emotional hunger; his life is rationalised in the extreme and society is for the most part indifferent to his personal life and the more so to his inner world. In bourgeois society psychoanalysis, which aims at compensating for the individual's emotional and intuitive deformation, seeks to exercise a normalising effect on man's subconscious. But this provides nothing more than the illusion of restoring the deformed man. Art, however, as an integral representation of the world, is capable of affecting mans harmoniously and of evoking in him a feeling of completeness and of the universal purposefulness of his existence. A truly significant artistic work embodies these qualities, reflecting the objective processes of society's social and spiritual life, ``embracing'' all levels of this life and synthesising them within itself.
But for these objective possibilities to be realised, the process of affecting man must exert an influence not only upon the ideological and rational structures of the individual (for example, on the level of aesthetic education), but also upon his emotional structures.
The necessity for intensifying aesthetic effect on man by means __PRINTERS_P_67_COMMENT__ 3* 67 of art is confirmed by the actual experience of modern man's spiritual life: modern man gravitates towards stable, ``eternal'' spiritual values---national traditions, thinking in folkloric images, etc.---that is, towards spiritual and aesthetic values that link the present with the past and give a stable feeling of the totality and universality of life, rather than of the disconnectedness of ``the chain of times''.
Bourgeois art historians at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries made an attempt to discover those general features of art which would characterise it as an integral aesthetic phenomenon.
Heinrich Wolfflin, for example, viewed art as a stylistic entity in which the artist's individuality is dissolved. The general form of artistic vision becomes a universal attribute of art. But Wolfflin's quests were basically limited to formal characterisations of art, which could not but lead the head of the Vienna school to a formalist resolution of the problem.
The next attempt to discover the universal principles of art and artistic style was made by Ernst Cohn-Wiener, who defined the features specific to the latter on the basis of three basic factors: tectonic, decorative and ornamental. According to Cohn-Wiener, true style is always functional; therefore true art is always linked to the tectonic and the expedient. Cohn-Wiener was disturbed by the lack of style which, in his view, predominated in 19th-century art. However, inadequacies of general methodology, including CohnWiener's denial of the influence of spiritual life on the development of art and its styles, made it impossible for him, as for Wolfflin, to resolve the problem of the universal and essential principles of art.
Although both Wolfflin and Cohn-Wiener point in the most general way to the fact that the aesthetic individuality of art is mediated by the life of society (or, in Wolfflin, by an idea of form which a nationality possesses) and even by material and economic factors, which are perceived through style (Cohn-Wiener), nevertheless neither goes further than a simple statement of this intercommunication.
It is, thus, still more necessary to discover the specific, particular foundations determining the aesthetic integrity and originality of art.
In turning to this side of the problem, we should indicate that two basic levels, two basic strata, obtain in the history of art.
The first of these is the immediate social stratum, in which historical concrete social and artistic problems are realised. In this stratum specific artistic methods and styles arise which most adequately correspond to historical conditions and, accordingly, to 68 developing artistic taste. In this way the drama and plastic arts of the ancients, Gothic and Renaissance art, classicism and romanticism, realism and modernism arose.
But side by side with this exists another stratum, that of popular creativity, the stratum of folklore in which, moving from age to age, the most universally significant artistic values are preserved. This culture undergoes almost no stylistic changes and its methods of viewing the world in images, once evolved, remain stable and autonomous. Both the popular artistic consciousness, folklore, resting on the more ancient basis of mythological consciousness, and the ``carnival'' art of the mass of the people in modern times, which in its turn rests on folklore, are preserved and function in this stratum. This art is more symbolic; its figurativeness accumulates the aesthetic merits of the popular artistic consciousness, but sometimes takes in its more routine and torpid aspects as well.
The true artist attains considerable success only when he embraces the depth of the popular artistic consciousness and combines this with the immediate social problems of life, thus realising the principle of the integrity of art. The specific feature of art as a social and aesthetic integrity is that its parts (strata) exist in a harmonious unity and that it is more stable than other systems.
In cases when a contradiction arises between the popular mythological stratum and the immediate social stratum, the artistic work ceases to exist as an integrity. A set of formal features of artistic activity may be preserved in this system, but destruction of the organic unity of the parts leads to the destruction of the essence of artistic reflection as consolidated in the work.
The gravitation of a great artist towards integral reproduction of the world is revealed with especial clarity in the eras of great artistic quests. Many literary critics have emphasised this: A. N. Veselovsky, for example, in analysing medieval culture, wrote that ``...the singer ... unconsciously takes up old legends and traditions and song types, which generations of singers and listeners have gradually brought closer to their understanding and the level of the time".^^1^^ ``The merging of these generalisations,'' notes Veselovsky later, ``with the epic, immobile personages of the mysteries pointed to the possibility of further development, to the embryos of dramatic life."^^2^^
The process of assimilation and transformation of the folk epos is convincingly shown by N. I. Konrad in an analysis of the _-_-_
^^1^^ A. N. Vesetovsky, Collected Works, Vol. 1, St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 36 (in Russian)
~^^2^^Ibid., p. 45
69 Japanese feudal epos of the 12th-14th centuries. This epos was based on the folklore of preceding ages, principally on the folklore of tribal society. This ``folklore of cosmogonic myths, legends and fairy tales"^^1^^ was transformed into the ``legend'' of the feudal class, ``...into a folklore of didactic fairy tales drawing their material from everyday life or from history"^^2^^ That is, it took concrete shape in terms of the social tasks which the feudal class of medieval Japan set itself. ``Threads from each of the folklores,'' Konrad notes, ``subsequently stretched into the future. Not one of the literatures of these ... social strata could have emerged without a preliminary folklore stage in the creative activity of the class which produced it.``This was the case with feudal literature, too, particularly with the feudal epos, which sprang from just these sources in folklore."^^3^^
But this process of assimilation of the folklore stratum must not be superficial and completely subordinated only to the essential problems of the day; at the same time, it must not be confined to an assimilation of only a proximate cultural tradition. A true, fruitful assimilation of tradition has a ``global'' character, taking from the past that which determines the dialectically infinite prospects of artistic development.
The problem of ``tradition and innovation" was examined by a special section at the Fifth International Congress of Aesthetics in Amsterdam in 1965.
Two Soviet aestheticians---Mikhail Ovsyannikov, in a paper entitled ``The Essence of Innovation in Art'', and Nikolai Goncharenko, in a paper ``On the Criterion of the New in Art"---raised the question of the constructive aspects of innovation and showed that innovation depends on the social and economic processes taking place in society. The Marxist-Leninist theory of artistic progress is contradicted by the pluralistic conception of the evolution of art, which is most fully expressed by Thomas Munro in his book Evolution in the Arts. In Munro's view, no single social factor ``holds universal priority as the basic determinant"^^4^^ and therefore reliance must be placed on empirical research, which must seek ``to discover which (factors) are present in each case, and in what relative strength and configuration".^^5^^
In papers presented for discussion attention was for the most _-_-_
~^^1^^ N. I. Konrad, The Japanese Literature, Moscow, 1974, p. 316 (in Russian)~
~^^2^^Ibid.
~^^3^^ Ibid.
~^^4^^Thomas Munro, Evolution in the Arts..., Cleveland, 1963, b. 442.
^^5^^ Ibid.
70 part directed towards the problem of assimilating historically proximate traditions.The problem was presented in a more fundamental way by Daniel J. Crowley of California. In a paper entitled ``Innovation in African Art" he attempted to show the more deep-rooted popular sources of the processes taking place in contemporary African art.^^1^^ However, trends of another order are also observed.
In a paper entitled ``Tradition and Innovation'', Luigi Pareyson of Turin emphasised that the artist must skilfully combine the new with the legacy of the past in his work; however, preference was given to the innovations of the avantgarde. Pareyson considered that the process of continuity must mainly manifest itself in the sphere of artistic form.^^2^^
At the 7th International Congress of Aesthetics (Bucharest, 1972) Mikel Dufrenne (France) delivered a lecture on the subject of art and politics . Dufrenne believes that for the sake of the utmost ``revolutionization'' of art, which must be turned into a game and a source of pleasure, any kind of heritage, even that of the distant past, must be renounced. He considers that art must smash ``oppressive'' values, mock ideology that ``emasculates'' it, liberate vital energy and lead to ecstatic and profound pleasure. Dufrenne also expressed this ultra-anarchistic view in an interview at the congress, declaring that he was concerned about the problem of ``how to free ourselves from culture in order to return ... to something primordial, primitive"^^3^^
The ex t remely grotesque phenomena of contemporary bourgeois anticulture and all kinds of ephemeral ``ultra-revolutionary'' experiments find their theoretical justification in such conceptions; and this is to make no mention of the social and political aspects of the latter.
A position of extreme anarchism similar to that expressed by Dufrenne arouses a negative reaction in many aestheticians. Gianni Vattimo, an Italian delegate to the Congress, for example, in a sense answered Dufrenne and condemned contemporary Nietzscheanism when he said: ``...Nietzsche was an intellectual rebel, a petty-bourgeois.... The artist must always maintain a close link with the social atmosphere of his age".^^4^^
Research into the most stable and universal bases for art's existence and development has a fundamental methodological _-_-_
^^1^^ Actes du cinquieme congre's international d'esthetique, Amsterdam, 1964, La Haye-Paris, 1968, pp. 175--177.
~^^2^^Ibid., pp. 195--207.
^^3^^ 7th International Congress of Aesthetics, Informational Bulletin No. 3, 8.30.1972, p. 8, Bucharest, 1 1972, p. 8
^^4^^ Ibid., Informational Bulletin No. 4, 8.31.1972, p.9
71 significance and makes it possible to show the insolvency of ``pluralist'' and anarchist conceptions in bourgeois aesthetics, of modernism. At the same time, an understanding of art as a phenomenon uniting within itself the folklore and the immediate social stratum enables us to discover the criteria of genuine artistic creativity and genuine art.Thus, M. M. Bakhtin, in examining the work of Francois Rabelais, wrote: ``...Contemporary reality ... broadly and fully reflected in Rabelais' novel is illuminated by images drawn from popular festivities. In their light even the.best prospects for this reality appear, nevertheless, as limited and far from popular ideals and aspirations...."^^1^^ For this very reason ``the most important feature (of Rabelais'work) is that he is more closely and fundamentally bound to popular sources than others, ... these sources determined his entire imagery and his artistic outlook (my italics---Y. Y.)".^^2^^
However, this organic and deep-seated link between Rabelais and popular sources in no way prevented him from being a highly contemporary artist and from posing and artistically resolving urgent social questions. On the contrary, this link enabled him to direct a more penetrating gaze on the world around him. ``...Urgent political questions,'' stresses Bakhtin, ``play an extremely vital role in the novel.... Rabelais occupied foremost progressive positions in the struggle of forces that took place in his age"^^3^^. Y. M. Yevnina, another Rabelais scholar, writes that ``this peculiarly Rabelaisian exuberant perception of life ... determined ... the joyous, materialistic quality of his book and the fullblooded and life-affirming character of his realism".^^4^^
The importance of an artistic work is also determined by the extent to which, through the synthesis of these two strata, it reveals man as a social creature in his concretely historical being. The uniqueness of the artist's individuality and the richness of his subjective approach inevitably intermingle in this process. The artistic work is, therefore, the result of the interpenetration of two developing sides of objective reality: social reality and the reality of nature, perceived through the prism of popular mythological and immediate social strata of art, and the essence of the artist in all his aesthetic individuality. Quite often two extremes can be observed here. In some cases art, in placing an absolute value on the object _-_-_
^^1^^ M. Bakhtin, The Work of Francois Rabelais and the Popular Culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Moscow, 1965, p. 494 (in Russian)
^^2^^ Ibid., p. 4
~^^3^^ Ibid., pp. 488, 492
^^4^^ Y. M. Yevnina, Franfois Rabelais, Moscow, 1948, p. 344 (in Russian)
72 and grasping ``the state of the world" (Hegel), ``loses'' man, his individuality and his personal world and forfeits the social perspective without awareness of which art is inconceivable. But truly great art is able to overcome this, upholding and defending the freedom and beauty of Man as an individual and as a social being.In the history of culture this process follows an ascending spiral, facilitating thereby the perfecting of social relations, social progress and the development of a harmonious integrity of the individual.
Thus, the art of ancient Greece objectivised the popular mythological consciousness and the immediate social aspects of life (civic spirit, heroism, courage, duty), uniting them with man's physical existence. At the same time the artist and age are organically merged in this art.
The art of medieval Europe showed new aspects of these developing forces of artistic assimilation. In its religious and mythological forms art revealed the earthly states of man. At the same time this art turned towards man's hitherto artistically unassimilated feelings, to his inner world. (But this in no way means that medieval artistic thinking was on a higher level overall than ancient art.)
The art of the Renaissance begins as a synthesis of the ancient and the medieval. ``The new age begins with a return to the Greeks. The negation of negation!" observed Frederick Engels.^^1^^ We know that the negation of negation presupposes the assimilation in a synthesis of both thesis and antithesis. Renaissance art combined in a single whole the corporeity and spirituality of the human being and synthesised within itself to the greatest possible degree the popular mythological consciousness and the immediate social problems of its time.
While itself historically unprepared to reveal completely the social motives of human behaviour, Renaissance art nevertheless paved the way for the rise of the art of critical realism, in which the dialectics of the human spirit are an analogue of the dialectics of social life, perceived through the prism of the artist's uniquely individual vision.
In contemporary bourgeois society art is both heterogeneous and multisem antic.
On the one hand, it is represented by the numerous currents and trends of modernism. Modernism, which distortedly reflects only the external aspects of reality, lacks prospects, since it destroys the integrity of art's influence on man and also destroys its universality. _-_-_
^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels on Art, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1967, p. 312 (in Russian)
73 It inflates either the emotional aspect (surrealism), the volitional aspect (mass culture) or the rational aspect of art (abstractionism, pop art, op art) thereby intensifying the disconnectedness ot consciousness and the disharmony of the spiritual world of man living in the atmosphere of bourgeois culture.On the other hand, in its content and aesthetic meaning great art is broader and deeper than the rigid framework into which the ruling class places it. Art is more stable than any other ideology and resists pressure from the bourgeoisie; therefore in original, concretely historical forms it creates images, even under these conditions, going far beyond the bounds of the limited bourgeois consciousness.
Finally, the art of socialist realism is advancing along the path towards artistic perfection, defined by Engels as ``...the complete merging of great ideological depth, of a recognised historical content ... with a Shakespearian vitality and richness of action...."^^1^^ In socialist art the social and class roots of man's spiritual world and behaviour are laid bare and the revolutionary traditions of the people are organically combined with the goals of socialist and communist construction.
To sum up: the real and actual universality, integrity and perfection of man are clearly expressed in art. Art creates a universal system of values and a picture of life in the form of images that are emotionally convincing. It evolves humanistic principles of behaviour and provides an answer to the innermost problems of human existence (concerning the meaning of life, death, happiness, duty and heroic feat). A fruitful contact with it, therefore, enables man to re-establish or develop the richness of his inner spiritual world.
_-_-_^^1^^ Marx/Engels, Werke, Bd. 29, S. 601
[74] __ALPHA_LVL2__ CRITERIA OF AESTHETIC EVALUATIONB. Lukyanov
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.At the present time, when art has entered everyone's life and become a genuine spiritual need, the problem of determining its quality has acquired particular significance. It is, of course, possible to rely on ``the judgement of history'', which, it is said, will put everything in its place. But this hope, while a pleasant one, is not sufficient: the consumer of art, after all, cannot content himself with the classics alone---he wants to hear the words of his contemporaries, too. And he has a right to expect help from scholarship in establishing the real value of works of art.
Aesthetics and critics have at all times aimed at objectivity in making evaluations. However it is evident that, even given such an aspiration, the results obtained will vary in relation to the interpretation placed on art itself.
Nor do the difficulties involved in making an objective evaluation cease even when a more or less precise definition of art has been formulated. One such difficulty, in particular, is that an evaluation made by a subject should be objective: that is, the subjectivity and personal involvement of the critic should eventually develop into objective analysis. Is this possible? Is scholarship capable of formulating criteria whose application does justice to the artist while not forcing him into a predetermined framework yet leaving room for imagination and creativity?
The task is clearly not an easy one and is no less complex for the fact that the concept of evaluation, as employed in so specific a field as art, demands a whole series of qualifications. Evaluation is usually understood to mean establishment of the cost of something---the fixing of a price---or the eliciting of the value, significance, character or essence of something. Since it is evident that perception of a work of art in no way implies the fixing of a 75 price for it, only two meanings remain to be applied to the concept of aesthetic evaluation: those of the definition of essence and character and, in consequence, of value and significance, the more so as one is, as a rule, revealed through the other. But what does ``definition of the essence and character" of a work of art mean? It means to apply the whole apparatus of aesthetics and art scholarship to the work, to analyse it from all sides and only then to proceed further to the evaluation itself, with its implacable, often denied purpose of placing one work above another.
The next series of questions arises when we come to consider that it is the problem of aesthetic evaluation, rather than some other kind of appraisal, which confronts us. The term ``aesthetic evaluation'' can be understood in two ways. It can mean, firstly, that aesthetic objects---art, the beauty of nature or of artefacts, etc.---are being evaluated; or, secondly, it can indicate that any kind of object is being evaluated, but that this is being done from the point of view of its having aesthetic qualities. This immediately raises a fresh problem, namely that of the correlation between aesthetic and other forms of evaluation, e.g., from the utilitarian point of view. In the first interpretation of ``aesthetic evaluation'', aesthetic worth is presupposed and it remains, therefore, only to establish its degree; in the second, aesthetic quality as such is uncertain and the object of analysis is to reveal it.
It is not difficult to see that these two conceptions of ``the aesthetic" represent successive evaluative acts which, as a rule, are so closely interwoven as to be frequently indistinguishable: namely, the establishment of whether we are in fact confronted by an aesthetic object (that is, one to which aesthetic criteria may be applied), followed by analysis of the degree to which it possesses aesthetic qualities (however we understand the latter).
But perhaps the criteria of both these stages coincide and the very tools of analysis which assist the critic in establishing whether or not he is dealing with art would also be suitable for determining the quality of this art? An answer to this question---in the negative-ris provided by the very existence of such concepts as ``good'' and ``bad'' art, since they presuppose that there are works which satisfy the criteria of art but are unable to ``pass'' the test of their ``quality''. This answer is inadequate because it fails to provide a comprehensive interpretation either of the one or of the other criterion. We must, therefore, return to a question which is as old as the world: how can we recognise art as such?
Let us imagine a situation. A murder is committed in public. What would be the reaction? The desire, naturally, to prevent the act, to help the victim, to punish the murderer, etc. But imagine 76 another situation, also involving a murder which, too, is injust; this time the onlookers do not stir, although there are many of them sitting in rows in a hall, filling the boxes and the balcony; occasionally, however, they break into applause. What keeps them in their seats? The answer is some kind of sign, signal or communication that the murder is not real and that what they are seeing is a representation: play-acting in a theatre. What sort of sign? The history of art has preserved many such signs, from the special adornment or body painting characteristic of ritual dances to carnival and theatrical masks, from the manner of pronunciation (rhythm, rhyme) to the frame around a painting (not excluding a ``frame'' such as the footlights).
In other words, the signal telling us we are dealing with a work of art is always some kind of convention, warning the viewer or reader against completely identifying what he sees with life. It was this idea that Lenin emphasised when summarising Feuerbach and giving the German philosopher's thoughts an aphoristic turn: ``Art does not require the recognition of its works as reality."^^1^^ The same phenomenon may or may not be art, depending not on its content but on its inclusion within the system of conventions of one or other art form. The power of art to transform and subordinate any phenomena to itself is put to graphic use in the French film ``La vie conjugale'', in which the apparently sincere anger or complaints of the heroine are immediately followed by the response of the director: ``Splendidly done! Will you repeat that!" or ``Inimitable! Once again!" Thus, by the end of the film the viewer does not know whether the actress has been sincerely crying and complaining or playing a prepared part. We may note that contemporary pop art draws parasitically upon this ability of art.
But it is at this point that the inadequacy of conventional criteria, which are determined in advance and define art by ``framing'' it or delimiting it from non-art, becomes apparent. A frame can be placed around almost any work, from The Boyarinya Morozova or the splashes of colour of an abstract painter to an old boot. Everything can have pretensions to being art, but not everything is art. The function of separating valid claims from invalid ones is performed by the criteria of .artistic value.
At the present time other difficulties, too, with which thinkers of the past have grappled, remain clearly apparent. One such insidious problem, for example, is that of ``tautology'' of criteria. The essence of this lies in the fact that criteria of evaluation are worked _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 73
77 out on the basis of the study of masterpieces which, naturally, serve as examples of the unsurpassed. Subsequent artists have had, consequently, either to create in terms of established canons or to take new paths and accept accusations of deviating from the rules of ``good taste'', destroying aesthetics, etc. Masterpieces involuntarily become a brake on progress and the ``judgement of history" is transformed into a summary tribunal. This is not to mention the fact that the canonisation of masterpieces effectively removes these works themselves from the scope of criticism, making it impossible to distinguish what is of lasting value in them from their shortcomings. This not only distorts taste but also ultimately precludes the establishment of an evaluative method capable of taking account of all new theories. Lev Tolstoy wrote, for example, that ``nothing so bedevils the concept of art as the recognition of authorities. Instead of determining whether, according to a clear and precise concept of art, the works of Sophocles, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe ... measure up to conceptions of good art and which ones in particular do so, art itself and its laws are defined in terms of existing works by artists recognised as great. Yet there are many works by noted artists which are beneath criticism and many false reputations, which have achieved fame by chance."^^1^^The history of aesthetics shows, too, that attempts to find a single, all-embracing criterion invariably produce results that are less than satisfactory. This was true of Aristotle's ``coordination and proportionality'', Diderot's ``relationships'' and Hegel's ``correspondence of form and content'', not because they failed to conform to reality but because, having marked out a facet or aspect of art, they placed an absolute significance upon it to the detriment of other aspects of art. The more abstract and ``general'' a criterion, the more readily it has countenanced inferior art as well; moreover, criteria of this kind have been of little assistance to the critic in making practical evaluations, since, for example, a criterion such as the unity of form and content, which is, in general, valid, requires a further criterion verifying the presence of unity. If we adduce a number of criteria rather than one criterion, the problem inevitably arises of the system to which they belong and the order in which they must be applied. It would, for example, be incorrect simply to list several criteria, even if they were, individually, of importance. We shall have a system of criteria at our disposal only when, having begun with the principal criterion (i.e., one rooted in the essence of art), we examine it until we feel its inadequacy: that is, until we reach the point at which the criterion _-_-_
~^^1^^L. N. Tolstoy, Works in 20 Volumes, Vol. 20, Moscow, 1965, p. 65 (in Russian!
78 itself, through the logic of its application, leads us beyond its own boundaries towards a new criterion, adding to the first, and so on, until every aspect of art essential to producing an evaluation has been covered. Only criteria through which runs a chain of logical succession form a system; otherwise they represent a chaotic heap of weapons which, although menacing in themselves, have not been made battle-ready.The key to the criteria of evaluation lies, consequently, in the conception of art. The essence of art is given detailed examination in Marxism; Marxist aestheticians, proceeding from the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin and guided by Lenin's theory of reflection, have created a consistently scientific theory of art. According to this theory, art is a form of human activity which reflects surrounding reality in a specific form (artistic images) from the viewpoint of a social and aesthetic ideal. Naturally, the evaluative criteria of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics, too, flow from this conception. In reflecting life, art performs a whole series of interconnected tasks, from the expression of an ideal, the cognition of reality and the expression of popular aspirations and hopes to recreation and amusement, the supplementing of meagre life experiences and much else. The multiple function of art in itself makes it doubtful that a single, universal criterion will suffice for its evaluation. Rather, we may assume a complex, internally subordinated, system of criteria. However, although many artistic criteria were subjected, in isolation, to highly detailed examination in aesthetic writings, the task of uniting them by an inner logic was rarely undertaken.
As we have already noted, only the Marxist-Leninist conception of art and, above all, the theory of reflection, can provide a scientific basis for attaining this goal. In this connection, Lenin's essays on Tolstoy acquire especial significance. We find in them the first, principal and objective criterion for the evaluation of art: ``And if we have before us a really great artist, he must have reflected in his work at least some of the essential aspects of the revolution."^^1^^ This principal criterion evidently forms a demand concerning content: specifically, the degree to which it reflects important aspects of reality. Lenin was to make numerous refinements, clarifications and additions to this criterion, but the main point---the first premise---is clearly fixed: if art is a reflection of life, it is to be evaluated in terms of how profoundly this is done. The significance of the concept of ``the essential" will be discussed in detail below; firstly, let us examine the meaning of ``correct reflection''. Only one concept can fully accommodate this demand:
_-_-_^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, On Literature and Art, Moscow, 1970, p. 28
79 ``truth''. Correct reflection is truthful reflection. When we turn back to the sources of art and of meditation on art, we always find this among the fundamental criteria, although it takes different forms, ranging from a demand for an exact reproduction of reality (we recall the contest between Zeuxis and Apelles) to complete rejection of faithfulness to the visible world and a search for the ``unseen'' world, for ``inner'' truth.Thus, since the concept of ``truth'' has changed in content, over the centuries, we are faced again and again with the task of defining it as faithfully as possible. Above all, we must jettison the naive claim to see in art an exact copy of reality. This standpoint is erroneous both because art is incapable of creating another world like the existing one and because it does not set itself the goal of creating a ``spare'' reality. On the contrary, art directly declares its conventional character; so far from concealing this, it is sometimes even proud of its conventionality. The fact that art, while not claiming to reproduce life exactly, insists at the same time on a truthful representation of it obliges us to examine more closely the specific features of reflection and truth in art, distinguishing the latter from scientific truth henceforth by use of the term ``artistic truth'', a distinction known to both Aristotle and Diderot.
Artistic truth is above all distinguished from scientific truth by its tolerance of the altered, the conventional, by comparison with life. This fact is of fundamental significance in evaluating a work, for, without rejecting the general demand that art resemble life within the framework of the theory of reflection, the category of artistic truth enables the artist more freely to dispose of his material and, consequently, offers him a broader scope for creativity. The opportunities for using the clearly imaginary in art become even clearer if we recall that art, above all, examines man: that is, artistic truth may be understood as truth about man and his relationship in the world and towards the world. In order to represent this truth the artist will admit ``local'' exaggerations, combinations and inventions, thus conveying what is most valuable: the human spirit, thoughts and feelings.
But this, no matter how important, is insufficient to reveal the essence of the category of artistic truth. The problem of ``conventionality'' in art is at bottom the problem of ``how'' to write; what to write or, more broadly, what to reflect remains an open question. The limitation imposed by the simple circumstance that the artist is unable to convey the world in its totality in a novel or on canvas obliges him to reflect only certain parts of it: that is, to make a selection of material.
Thus we come to the first limitation: the point at which the 80 criterion of truth must be supplemented by a new criterion, where truth in itself is inadequate and where, consequently, a transition occurs to a new criterion, flowing of necessity from the initial one, functioning as a first premise.
The world around us is far from uniform in value. Which facts are worthy of the artist's attention? Marxist-Leninist aesthetics employs a special category, which is indispensable to the theory of evaluation: the category of typicality. Here, too, we must refer to the idea, expressed by Lenin in connection with Tolstoy, that the artist must reflect not what he sees in general, but the important sides of reality. This point involves the category of the ``typical'', which is dialectically linked to the category of the ``individual'' by interpenetration. The ``typical'' is still often understood to mean ``the most frequently encountered'', ``the most probable'', etc. Such an arithmetical interpretation is unable to explain why Turgenev's Bazarov or Chernyshevsky's Rakhmetov were, in their time, types, although they did not belong to the majority. The typical is the expression of the essence of a particular phenomenon in its individual and concrete being. It represents a kind of summit towards which the majority of human natures-or phenomena are drawn. But the category of typicality also has its boundaries. Since determining whether a given person is ``typical'' is not possible without philosophical and social analysis, questions of world outlook and socio-political and class viewpoints are drawn into the process of evaluation. And since the question of a phenomenon's typicality cannot be answered without touching upon the ideology of the person passing judgement on the one hand and the ideology of the artist on the other, the critic is obliged to turn to a new criterion: that of the idea content of art.
Ideology implies the evaluation of reality from a particular point of view or in terms of a certain system of values: in short, from the standpoint of an ideal. The ideal is that norm or model in which people's ideas of society and man are summarised. This ideal is not constant; it is worked out in the course of centuries and acquires a genuinely scientific, objectively true content only in Marxism. Of course, it must not be thought that illuminating life from the standpoint of an ideal necessarily implies either laying on gloss or glossing over faults, etc. ``We do not demand ... ideal people at all,'' wrote Saltykov-Shchedrin, ``but we do demand an ideal."^^1^^ This means showing life in such a way that the reader is clearly conscious of the goal and trend of efforts to reshape the world.
_-_-_^^1^^ Saltykov-Shchedrin, Collected Works in 20 volumes, Vol. 5, Moscow, 1966, p. 185 On Russian)
81But perhaps in talking of evaluation by the artist of events described we are deviating from the function of art? Perhaps the true artist is one who does not involve himself in struggle but only observes it from the sidelines and represents it objectively? It is just these problems that the criterion of ideological commitment resolves. Many aestheticians continue in their attempts to assert that any talk of the ideological commitment of art (and still more of its partisanship) represents a failure to understand the essence of art, putting it at the service of political struggle, infringing upon its specific character, etc. That this is not true and that the criterion of ideological commitment is not imposed upon art but is immanent in it and gives expression to its innermost core was the subject of writings by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov and the Russian revolutionary democrats. Modern Marxist aestheticians understand by communist idea content the expression in art of progressive social ideals and the class and social tendencies of a work of art, as well as the criticism of ideas or conditions of life that contradict these ideals. It is important to stress that we are talking here not of an idea content that is, as it were, attached to the work from outside, but one which emanates from the very artistic images and which is an artistic conclusion and not a rational moralisation.
The history of the development of art shows that the degree to which art is impregnated with ideas varies over the centuries. The general rule here is, however, firstly, of the growing awareness by artists of their social standpoint and, secondly, of the ever increasing mastery of scientific theories which explain the surrounding world. Many artists in the past instinctively felt the injustice of a social system based on the exploitation of man by man and opposed it. However, criticism of this kind was frequently weakened by lack of understanding of the nature of the system. For example, Dobrolyubov regarded as a serious shortcoming in Gogol's genius the fact that although he ``came very close to the point of view of the people, he did so unconsciously, simply by his artist's sense of touch"^^1^^ Dostoyevsky's attitude towards idea content is indicative, for in this respect he was often at odds with Tolstoy. ``In poetry,'' Dostoyevsky wrote, ``passion is needed, your own idea is needed and a pointing finger is absolutely indispensable...."^^2^^ These admissions carry the more weight inasmuch as few attacked exploitation of the idea of ``direction'', (that is, the exploitation of popular ideas), as fiercely as Dostoyevsky.
_-_-_^^1^^ N. A. Dobrolyubov, Works in 9 volumes, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1962, p. 271 (in Russian)
^^2^^ ``Unpublished Dostoyevsky'', Literary Heritage, Vol. 83, Moscow, 1971, p. 610 (in Russian)
82In summing up everything stated above concerning idea content, we cannot but note that everywhere it was a question of the necessity for taking a definite stand in the social struggle. This feature of art is frequently evaluated in terms of ``party allegiance" and ``kinship with the people'', which in our time have coalesced with the concept of progressive idea content.
Thus, the experience accumulated by artists in gaining an understanding of their work, numerous works by theoreticians and the history of the arts provide irrefutable evidence that the idea content of an author's work and his political standpoint form one of the principal springs of any work and that without evaluating this aspect it is impossible to form an opinion of the value of art.
Nevertheless, evident truths sometimes seem too simple. For example, the ``uncertainty'' of form that is seen when a film or book leaves its principal character on the threshold of a decision is frequently confused with an ``uncertainty'' of idea content: that is, the author's indefinite attitude to what is taking place. Confusing uncertainty of form (which no one has renounced since, say, Chekhov) with uncertainty of ideological stand unquestionably leads to incorrect evaluative judgements.
Finally, let us turn to another important problem in defining the idea content of a work of art. Hitherto we have dealt with relatively simple cases, in which the ideological meaning of a work is chiefly given through a ``positive'' main character. The situation becomes more complex when the artist undertakes the representation of pivotal periods of history, in which the main character combines both positive and negative features. The clear-cut polarity of two opposed centres is replaced by a picture in which the author aims at presenting his main character with the maximum objectivity, uncovering every side of his nature. Of course, this does not mean that henceforth the author adheres to ideological neutrality. The representation of complex, contradictory characters precludes their evaluation by the author in simple, or even simplistic terms, but by no means excludes the evaluation as such. It is frequently within this context that the greatest difficulty arises in the definition of idea content when the ideas of the author diverge from the objective meaning of what he portrays. Classic examples of this occur with Turgenev's Bazarov and the principal characters of Balzac. But there are much earlier cases. One of the first occurs in the clear discrepancy between authorial evaluations and the objective significance of a character's actions that is seen in Homer's Thersites. The divergence between the significance of Thersites' actions and speeches on the one hand and Homer's attitude towards him and the reactions of other characters on the other 83 is quite evident. Which idea content has objectively greater importance for us in such cases? That of the author or that of the leading character? What does the former express?---and the latter?
In one of his essays on Tolstoy Lenin left a valuable methodological indication: ``...Contradictions in Tolstoy's views,'' he wrote in 1908, ``must be appraised not from the standpoint of the present-day working-class movement and present-day socialism (such an appraisal is, of course, needed, but it is not enough), but from the standpoint of protest against advancing capitalism ... which had to arise from the patriarchal Russian countryside."^^1^^ Here we see two methods of evaluation clearly traced out, as it were, from ``inside'' and ``outside'' a particular social phenomenon. Which evaluation is the more significant? In another essay on Tolstoy Lenin gave the answer: ``That is why a correct appraisal of Tolstoy can be made only from the viewpoint of the class which has proved, by its political role and its struggle ... that it is destined to be the leader in the struggle for the people's liberty and for the emancipation of the masses from exploitation."^^2^^
If we understand the historical validity of Homer's views as a representative of the Greek polls, opposing any attempts to undermine its power (``There is no good in power exercised by many!'' Odysseus admonishes the trouble-makers), then in our own time the truth of Thersites, adhering to a point of view different from that of the powers that be, becomes clearly evident.
The criterion of idea content naturally implies not only the evaluation of philosophical and political ideas, but also of ethical, aesthetic and other ideas. Each of these ``subsystems'' of ideas can, in certain cases, be the decisive determinant of the value of art. This is particularly true in relation to ethical aspects, in connection with which we are fully justified in. speaking of the ``moral'' criterion of evaluation, representing a continuation of the criterion of idea content. The moral criterion of art makes it possible for us not only to separate, say, art from pornography, but also to uncover flaws in the artist's moral evaluation of the events represented.
The correctness of applying this criterion to art is confirmed by the evidence of many artists, in particular Tolstoy's well-known comment on Maupassant. The Russian author sharply criticised the Frenchman for often lacking ``the first, if not the main condition for the worth of a work of art and a correct, moral attitude towards what he represented, that is, a knowledge of the difference _-_-_
~^^1^^V. 1. Lenin, On Literature and Art, p. 30
~^^2^^Ibid., pp. 50--51
84 between good and evil''; ``the author's inner evaluation of what is good and what is evil becomes confused,'' Tolstoy observed.^^1^^ Frequently the moral antenna is a highly important source of evaluative judgement, particularly in works which do not impinge on great political and social problems---for example, lyrics. Of course, in order to judge others a critic must have an unimpeachable moral standpoint, corresponding to the most progressive world outlook of his time.During the process of analysing idea content and particularly the author's moral credo, the critic is frequently confronted by the interesting circumstance that in order to define precisely what an artist said or wanted to say, he must examine how the artist said it. After exhausting the first stratum of content and moving on to the various shades of thought, the critic finds himself faced to an increasing degree by the necessity of analysing artistic form, for without such analysis it is impossible to understand certain aspects of content.
Therefore, a series of criteria relating to content, one superseding the other, bring the analyst to a fresh series of criteria, this time relating to form, with the aid of which individual aspects of content can be clarified. Hegel noted that ``der Inhalt nichts ist, als das Unschlagen der Form in Inhalt, und die Form nichts, als Unschlagen des Inhalts in Form" (``content is nothing more than the transition from form to content and form is nothing more than the transition from content to form'').^^2^^ Thus, even the analysis of form inevitably brings the critic back once more to content.
We shall refer in this connection to the statement of art critics who, in the course of practical analysis, have constantly been faced by the limitation of ``purely'' formal criteria. ``We do not know,'' writes N. N. Volkov, the well-known Soviet art critic, ``why one colour combination seems beautiful to us and another, not."^^3^^ He goes on: ``The expressiveness of colour and colour combinations is as difficult to explain as the beauty of colour. One thing alone is evident: that expressiveness is linked to the emotional experience of people."^^4^^ In other words, the answer to the question of whether a particular colour is beautiful is posterior to and emerges from the answer to another question: whether the form of the picture as a whole is ``expressive'', which also means whether it is ``truthful''.
_-_-_^^1^^ Lev Tolstoy on Art and Literature, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1958, pp. 219, 225 (in Russian)
~^^2^^Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke, Vol. 6, Berlin, 1840, p. 264
~^^3^^ N. N. Volkov, Colour in Painting, Moscow, 1965, p. 86 (in Russian)
^^4^^ Ibid., p. 88
85Of course, we have exhausted no more than the basic criteria and have not considered possible modifications of them. For example, there are many cases when evaluation of the truthfulness and idea content of a work demands above all analysis of the principal character---at which point the criterion of character emerges; while sometimes the validity of an action acquires a particular importance, which brings into play the criterion of motivation. All these form modifications, the number of which is infinite. There is no reason to reprehend the multiplication of criteria provided this is not used to obscure the existence of main and overriding standards. Criteria which are quite appropriate in a general system become incidental and unreliable if they are deprived of initial scientific premises: namely, a correct understanding of the essence of art.
Finally, there is a whole series of criteria flowing from the concept of art which describe features specific to each truly aesthetic perception but which are, nevertheless, extremely difficult to use in argumentative evaluation. These are the criteria of ``novelty'', ``pleasure'' (enjoyment), ``interest'', etc. The difficulty involved in using them stems from the fact that all these criteria themselves require other criteria, i.e., they are not independent. Thus every work must be new, but not every new work has value. Every genuine work of art evokes pleasure and even enjoyment, but not every experience of pleasure testifies to the existence of a value, since, as we know, substitutes for art are also not infrequently liked by many people. Consequently, all these criteria are necessary but not sufficient for an objective evaluation, which is our subject, and we are brought back to the logical series of criteria which began this examination.
Such criteria as those of ``artistry'', ``beauty'', and so on represent quite another issue. The criterion of ``artistry'', for example, has so far failed to find a place here and this, of course, is not incidental. ``Artistry'' is a generalising concept and is, in consequence, the outcome of the application of a number of other criteria. As Chernyshevsky wrote, artistry is only a ``collective concept" to ``denote the whole complex of qualities proper to works by talented writers".^^1^^ When we say that something is artistic, we thereby do no more than summarise our evaluation of it; the grounds for concrete judgements of value are provided by other, more specific criteria. ``Beauty'', of which Lev Tolstoy even said that it confused the whole issue, is another such collective and general concept.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Russian Writers on the Craft of Writing, Vol. 2, Leningrad, 1955, p, 333 (in Russian)
86Attempts at defining artistry directly and immediately, bypassing preparatory evaluation ``aspect by aspect'', degenerate into sterile scholasticism. Was it not for this reason that Chekhov wrote that he feared the word ``artistry'' as a child feared bogeymen?
When the subject of the criteria of objective evaluation arises, we are usually placed on our guard: does this not herald the establishing of another normative aesthetics, a fresh model, against which the works of every new author must henceforth be ``measured''? Such apprehensions are, however, groundless. Objective criteria tell the critic that he must make quests, but that actually doing this---and each time on the basis of new materials---is a matter for the critic himself. To know the direction to follow and what to evaluate is a great deal in itself, but far from everything---and this does not relieve the critic from the necessity of possessing both taste and talent. We learn from the Goncourt brothers that Turgenev, while apologising for the comparison, likened Hippolyte Taine to a hunting dog he had once owned which could do almost everything correctly: ``He tracked, he stopped, he did everything a hunting dog does wonderfully well; there was only one deficiency---he had no sense of smell and I was obliged to sell him".^^1^^ This sad story is an excellent cautionary tale for all proponents of a normative aesthetics, who hope that a standard model will be sufficient in itself for the evaluation of art. Theory provides the critic with a method, but cannot and should not give him prescriptions for every case. As Chekhov said, for the analyst, whether he be scholar or critic, method constitutes ``half of the talent'', but although this represents a great deal, the inference, clearly, is that this is only half of the matter.
Thus, a system of criteria founded on the theory of reflection embraces in a definite sequence virtually all criteria now known. Of course, this logical chain is often curtailed in practical criticism, in cases, for example, where a flaw is sufficiently obvious to render discussion of other aspects of the work pointless. In just the same way, the critic does not always apply all the principles enumerated above in judging valid works. But in this case, the reason is quite the opposite: the artist, it is implied, has himself proceeded in his work from the very same premises and it is to be assumed that he had ``observed'' them. Consequently, it is possible to concentrate on other, generally less important, aspects which, should they be neglected, can substantially weaken the artistic effect of a work.
_-_-_~^^1^^ ``Journal des Goncourts'', Memoires de la vie litteraire, Tome cinquieme, 1872--1877, Paris, 1891. p. 174
87 __ALPHA_LVL2__ SOCIALIST REALISMA. Ladvgina
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.Even a cursory glance at the history of art cannot fail to register the clear and consistent desire on the part of its practitioners to reflect the substance of contemporary life. This desire is not always consciously recognised or buttressed by theoretical premises, but it is always alive in the best examples of artistic creation, which by virtue of it, in fact, survive their own eras and become timeless. The Egyptian pyramids, classical Greek sculpture and architecture and Renaissance painting are splendid monuments of their respective ages, stamped with the ideals, tastes and aspirations of those eras. The works of Dante, Shakespeare and Balzac breathe the spirit of their times. Even music, which is sometimes treated as a ``pure'' and detached art, represents a vivid example of an organic and profound link with the age that created it. Haydn and Mozart, Bach and Handel, Schubert and Schumann, Glinka and Mussorgsky were born of their times and of the vital needs of the life of society.
The urge to answer the needs of the contemporary world and resolve the great and difficult questions posed by the times and social requirements, the life of the people and their fundamental interests is an objective law of artistic creation and the most important condition for the existence of art.
In defining contemporaneity in art and in our very approach to this unusually acute aesthetic problem, we base ourselves on Lenin's well-known proposition that a permanent interaction between the experience of the past and that of the present is essential.^^1^^ The contemporaneity of art is a complex fusion of the _-_-_
^^1^^ See: V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 49
88 old and new and represents the unity of tradition and innovation: it is in this that the difficulty of examining the living, constantly selfrenewing, mutable artistic culture of society consists.The contemporaneity of Soviet art is determined by its links with the progress of life and the people's struggle to build a communist society. Whatever the artist reflects, wherever he turns his gaze-^to the past, present or future---his point of reference is the modern age, helping him in his choice of material, in his ideological understanding of it, and in his search for means of artistic expressiveness. Whereas if in past ages the work of progressive artists responded to the demands of the times in a way that was sometimes spontaneous and intuitive, then the desire of Soviet artists to comprehend the modern age is based on a consciousness of creative command. Socialist realism, which presupposes an understanding by the artist of the objective laws of social development, assists him in showing contemporary life in dynamic transition from past to future.
While representing a qualitatively new method of cognition and aesthetic transformation of the world, socialist realism simultaneously continues and develops the traditions of progressive world art in conformity with new historical conditions; as the heir to the historical experience of world art, it presumes the former's creative utilisation. This is not simply a manifestation of the good will or subjective wish of one particular artist. Socialist realism's inheritance of progressive artistic experience is a necessary, historically generated process, an expression of the objective tendency of artistic development.
In order to grasp this tendency, we must turn to the specific features of artistic continuity. This problem has been insufficiently examined in aesthetic writings, as a series of major international forums have vividly testified: during discussions at the 7th Congress of the International Music Council under UNESCO (Moscow, 1971), the 7th International Congress of Aesthetics (Bucharest, 1972) and the 15th Congress of the International Theatre Institute (Moscow, 1973) opposing approaches to the correlation between tradition and innovation in contemporary art were revealed and substantial gaps in the theoretical examination of artistic continuity became evident.
It is impossible to discuss the inheritance and continuation of classical artistic traditions or the nature of tradition and innovation in the art of our time generally and on a serious and scholarly level without elucidating the processes of historical continuity as a law of any artistic development.
In the course of time states fall and men's tastes, customs, habits 89 and entire manner of life change radically; one socio-economic formation is replaced by another, more progressive formation. Definite changes consonant with the times also occur in art, reflecting, in one way or another, these social changes. But much in art is indestructible, retaining its significance over the centuries and surviving the era that produced it.
Continuity is a remarkable feature of art, in which art's force and its infinite potential for exercising an authoritative influence on succeeding generations have been concentrated. Art is the only field of human activity in which not only the creative practices and methods of reflecting and transforming reality acquired during the course of centuries have been passed on and steadily perfected, but also the actual results of creative labour have preserved their permanent significance and been given material form in stone and wood, clay and metal, in paint and in words, on canvas and papyrus, in wall paintings and on note paper, on film and magnetic tape, and have become churches and statues, poems and symphonies, paintings and films. In what other field do works created hundreds and thousands of years ago appear as a revelation even today, continuing to live in their original form?
Of course, historical continuity is not exclusive to art. It also exists in other forms of social consciousness---in science, philosophy and ethics. Indeed this is a law of any kind of development---a condition for the existence of material and intellectual culture generally. But in art, as a result of its specific use of images and its integrated, synthetic representation of reality, continuity in all its many-facetedness and completeness assumes particular prominence. Great discoveries coexist in art, retaining fheir force at all periods; instead of ``cancelling out" what has previously been said, they supplement the general picture of infinitely varied artistic representation.
The experience of the past, concentrated in classical art, exists invisibly in today's art, flowing through it in an invigorating stream, aiding the artistic assimilation of the modern age and making it possible to avoid mistakes and pursue more reliable courses. This, in its turn, furthers artistic progress and accelerates its pace.
Continuity can take place in relation both to the art of an immediately preceding period and to art from the distant past; it can take place in relation to art close to contemporary art in a number of respects and, conversely, to art with no visible, obvious links with contemporary art. Continuity can be simple or complex, evident or concealed, mediate or immediate, continuous or discontinuous, internal or external, progressive or reactionary.
90More than simply an expression of the will of the writer or artist is manifested in continuity. The personal biases, inclinations and sympathies of the creators of art are, in fact, extremely varied and numerous. But in the given instance we are interested in that general tendency which emerges as the joint result of the artistic activity of individuals, i.e., in continuity as a law of artistic development independent of the will and desires of artists, a specific manifestation in art of the general dialectical law of the negation of negation and, in particular, a necessary repetition at a new stage and on a qualitatively different level of definite features, signs and aspects of the past stage of development of art and, simultaneously, their overcoming.
It is significant that from the multitude of words close and sometimes almost identical in meaning to the term ``continuity'' (utilisation, influence, borrowing, continuation, inheritance, transformation, repetition, return, preservation, transference), the human language has selected the broadest word with the richest concept, which implies and includes the entire range of shades of meaning. At the same time continuity is not a mechanical ``transference of culture'', not a passive ``borrowing'' or ``inheriting'' of ready-made artistic forms from the past. It is not alien to a given national culture nor does it represent ``transplantation'' and assimilation of cultures or the violent imposition upon developing countries of the culture of an economically and politically more powerful country. Continuity is a creative act of absorption and continuation of artistic traditions (both one's own and those of other nationalities, both of folk and professional art) and of their necessary active reinterpretation from the point of view of the aims of the modern age.
The new era does not simply ``accept its heritage" passively, but makes active use of it in the interests of its time. Continuity is a definite law of artistic development which involves the process of selection. Its essence is, ultimately, determined by more than spiritual premises. This is very important, for it provides a reliable scientific explanation of why it is socialist and communist art, the culture of a new, higher socio-economic formation, which is the true heir and successor of world artistic experience, giving thereby a point of reference to progressively-minded artists in every country.
Forms of expressing artistic continuity and inheritance in art are exceptionally varied.
By contrast with other fields of human activity, the permanent significance of art is preserved and handed on as above all the end result of creative work: that is, as a work of art in all its totality and 91 uniqueness, in the indissoluble unity of form and content. This is the first and most obvious form in which continuity in art manifests itself. Classic works of art live today and continue to hold a vital interest for the modern age, coming into contact with it at many points, gaining on each occasion fresh resonances and revealing hitherto unknown aspects of themselves. The outstanding works of the past, created in response to the social demands of their time, contain a hidden potential for functioning and developing and possess the capacity for resolving, directly or indirectly, contemporary problems. They continue to exercise an aesthetic influence on succeeding generations and provide the pleasure that comes of communion with the beautiful.
A second important form of expressing the continuity of artistic development is represented by the inheriting of artistic skill, the aesthetic traditions of the classics, definite ideological and creative principles which, taken together, constitute the concept of creative method, and a variety of permanent features of the creative process. In referring in the given instance to artistic skill, we have in mind the broad, rather than the narrow sense of this concept: that is, inheritance of the ability to find and select material from life, interpret it from the standpoint of a definite set of ideas and embody it in artistic images. There is a definite continuity in the content of the art of different eras, in the logic of its development and in the means of organising this content. The active desire to embrace life and interpret its most vital manifestations ever more profoundly may be inherited; but so, too, conversely, ,may tendencies to retreat from reality, ignore the vital problems of life and seek the refuge of an ivory tower. The writer can, relative to his class standpoint, world outlook and a number of other factors, continue and develop the great traditions of realism or follow the path of formalist experimentation, sometimes providing a minutely detailed, naturalistic facsimile of the sordid side of life. In the work of his predecessors the writer may be attracted by and, accordingly, inherit either high civic spirit, patriotism, kinship to the people or an obvious lack of ideas, snobbish aestheticism or individualism.
Finally, there is a third form .in which artistic continuity is manifested. This concerns the inheritance, continuation and utilisation .of the means of description and expression, the language of art and the artistic devices and creative methods developed by past generations of artists. Continuity is more tangible and clearly evident in this sphere and is more easily explained. It manifests itself in this area more or less continuously and progressively. Artistic means, undergoing a process of perfecting and refinement from age to age, are handed down from 92 generation to generation. The concept of ``a school" in art includes, too. the successive transmission of the mysteries of creativity, artistic methods and professional skill in the narrow sense: that is. in the sense of mastery of the techniques of art. and the ability to work with material and give it a form corresponding to the laws of the given form of art. All forms of art are, ultimately, subject to the laws ot continuity.
Even more important in the theoretical respect is the circumstance that over and above concrete forms of expression there are more fundamental ways in which continuity expresses itself in the history of art: namely, in the typological differentiation of similar processes. The type of historical continuity in art is determined by the nature and scale of the practical historical aims realised by the art of a particular period, the objective role of artistic creativity in the onward development of the life of society and also by the duration or real time of action of the given aesthetic law.
The history of art reveals the presence of different types of continuity in art. There is something in art which is the property of all mankind, passing through its entire history, constantly developing and being passed on from generation to generation, surviving this or that specific class, enriching itself, changing and replenishing itself thereby with new features, but preserving overall its positive content. This ``something'' is extremely heterogeneous and can include items from all the three forms of inheritance described above. All that is valuable, aesthetically significant and possesses permanent artistic qualities is gradually accumulated in art and carefully preserved by mankind; it serves as a stimulus to further artistic development and constitutes the principal stream of continuity in art. This type of continuity can be designated as absolute continuity in art.
Absolute continuity in art is a general category in aesthetics: its effect is not confined by class or national boundaries. At the same time this continuity manifests itself in one way or another in pre-class. class and classless art and has its specific forms of expression. Thus the class stratification of society which is inevitable at a particular stage of its development impedes the manifestation of absolute continuity in art and prevents it from being revealed in its pure form. The universal in the art of a class society is interwoven inextricably with that which relates to a particular class; the permanent is bound up with the transient.
But not everything in art---indeed, far from everything---falls within the competence of the law of absolute continuity, outliving 93 eras, centuries and classes. A great many phenomena in art, born ot'the demands of a class society---and originating from either of its poles---survive for a shorter period. These artistic phenomena are also adopted, also continued and also inherited; however, having fulfilled their class function and satisfied one or other social demand, they are exhausted of content, lose their past significance and are forgotten (or flow into the stream of absolute continuity). They also possess continuity, but this is not absolute continuity, running through the entire history of art: it is relative continuity, which is transient and has effect for a more or less short historical period. Relative continuity in art is an aesthetic category specific to class society.
The relative continuity which manifests itself in class society is, like absolute continuity, heterogeneous, since the very class structure of the society is itself heterogeneous and since in any socio-economic formation the interests of the two main opposing classes will, ultimately, clash. The art of a class, naturally, does not take everything from the past, but primarily that which corresponds to its class interests and can be used and placed at the service of class aims. Its continuity is selective. Such selective continuity can, in conformity with the place and role of the class in the course of social development, be designated either as relative progressive continuity or as relative regressive continuity.
The class, in carrying out its progressive historical function, seeks out and finds within the legacy of art those aesthetic ideals which are close to it and those artistic traditions which can become its traditions. Continuity of this kind is progressive, albeit relative (inasmuch as we are dealing with the interests of a class, even though an ascending class). To the degree to which the interests of a class coincide with the interests of social progress, relative progressive continuity forms an aspect of'absolute continuity, blazing a trail towards the merging of the progressive traditions of the past in the art of a future classless society.
That class which has lost its role in history as the driving force of social progress correspondingly changes its artistic partialities and looks for different traditions in the art of the past. Continuity of this kind is also relative, but reactionary and regressive. As class society develops from formation to formation relative regressive continuity changes its forms, but in a classless society it loses all substance, beconies outdated and vanishes from the scene together with the an ot'the last reactionary ruling class.
In the history of art a constant complex interaction between different types of historical continuity in art and their contradictory 94 dialectical development are to be observed. Relative progressive continuity changes its forms and flows into absolute continuity or, conversely, turns into relative regressive continuity. The latter, which is in contradictory union and conflict with relative progressive continuity, also changes its forms, seeking to present itself as absolute continuity. In a society of class antagonisms absolute continuity undeviatingly forces a path for itself, taking in and absorbing everything that is best and universal in art and enriching and replenishing itself from relative progressive artistic continuity.
Social consciousness, consonant with the materialist conception of history, reflects social being. The essence of social consciousness lies in reflecting social relationships, principal, decisive and primary among which are the production relations. Examining the structure of social relationships and distinguishing those among them which are most stable, most relevant to the whole of society and. in this sense, most permanent from those which are historically transient and related to a class, not only provides a materialist criterion for artistic continuity and makes it possible to establish a scientific foundation for its typology, but at the same time gives a theoretical grounding for the effective role of socialist and communist art as the only logical successor to the supreme achievements of worTd art. It is within socialist social relationships, which are fundamentally new and based on the elimination of private property and which simultaneously embody the great genetic link between human beings, the bearers of which are the toiling people, that the basis for the permanent in contemporary culture resides. Thanks to this, socialist social relationships serve under contemporary conditions as a basis for absolute continuity in art.
The theoretical and aesthetic expression of this law is the category of national character, which is one of the basic principles of socialist realism. Socialist realism, in formulating its position concerning the national character of art and proclaiming national character to be an indicator of the permanent and universal principle in art and a factor determining its deep inner roots, proceeds from the fact that ultimately it is the people who are concerned to see artistic progress and the preservation and development of all the best that has been amassed by mankind. The people represent art's chief and only legitimate heir and the guardian of the priceless classical heritage. In selecting that which is viable in the art of the past, the people not only carefully preserve it for coming generations, but also endow it with a new life in the 95 modern age through their plenipotentiaries, the artists.^^1^^ This is why socialist realism, in aiming not at a superficial imitation of reality but at a deep penetration into the core of life's processes and at the active participation of art in creatively changing life from the standpoint of an advanced and scientifically grounded ideal, is guided in this desire by artistic experience which has already been gained, carrying it on and augmenting it rather than breaking it off, and thereby implementing the progressive development of art.
The successive process of selection carried out by socialist art through the prism of communist ideology does not extend only to the heritage of the past, but also to a considerable extent to contemporary world art. Here, too, materialist criteria of continuity are decisive, assisting in the process of sifting out the necessary from the irrelevant. No problems or difficulties arise in connection with the continuity of art in countries with social systems of the same type as, in the given case, the countries of the socialist community: that which grows upon the soil of common socialist social relationships may be freely borrowed and adopted. The position with cultural interchange among countries of opposite social systems is more complex.
Everything which, in the art of the capitalist world, is the product of 'relationships of social inequality is unconditionally rejected; this relates particularly to the officially sanctioned bourgeois ideological superstructure. There is no continuity between socialist culture and contemporary bourgeois culture. However, that which embodies the progressive, socialist or democratic stream in the art of the contemporary bourgeois world is accepted by socialist culture and placed at the basis of an exchange of artistic values.
The Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and other party documents note the necessity of expanding the cultural ties of the Soviet Union, both with the countries of the socialist community and with the countries of the capitalist world. This is demanded by the interests of an exchange of scientific and cultural achievements as well as by the interests of mutual understandingand friendship among peoples. An awareness of the laws operating here and the ability to combine cultural continuity with the rejection of ideological compromise, based on _-_-_
^^1^^ In formulating this fundamental thesis, we should not ignore the following fact. Recognition of the people as the actual heir of artistic values promotes the development of a correct theoretical approach to the problem of national character in art, while social liberation of the working people provides a practical opportunity for resolving it. Long and purposeful work in the aesthetic education of the broad working masses is required to realise this opportunity.
96 consideration of the objective factors of social development, make it possible to avoid both an unjustified isolationism and an unprincipled cultural omnivorousness.The logic of social development is such that it is the working class and all working people, not the contemporary bourgeoisie, who are creating a firm bridge from the spiritual culture of the past to the culture of the present and future. This culture, which has absorbed the progressive traditions of the past and stands in direct line of succession to the entire advanced culture of the world and which is, at the same time, profoundly innovatory and contemporary in its essence, is now being built in socialist society. The method of socialist realism, which presupposes the conscious and convinced pursuit by artists of these fundamental creative goals, thus promotes artistic progress.
__PRINTERS_P_97_COMMENT__ 4---121 [97] __ALPHA_LVL2__ ART AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLEL. Mariupolskaya
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.The distinctive feature of modern art lies in its close contact with philosophical awareness. What is more, art's rapprochement with philosophical awareness is turning into a new principle of artistic development.
The ideological and artistic innovations of the art of socialist realism have a firm philosophical grounding. Marxism-Leninism's philosophical and theoretical answer to the problem of man is one of the important premises of the indisputable aesthetic achievements of socialist realism.
In bourgeois philosophical and aesthetic thought, howeyer, the process of the rapprochement of philosophy and art is at times given an intricate, paradoxical, and false expression. Idealistic philosophical trends, which grew out of the crisis of early bourgeois humanistic tradition but which still keep the problem of man in the centre of the research, are prone to gravitate towards aesthetics and art. ``The philosophy of life'', pragmatism, phenomenology, and, in the most extreme form, existentialism pose the question of regeneration of the methods and problems of philosophy with the aid of artistic and aesthetic ideas. Art is viewed by them as a way of returning philosophy to a purely ``hurqan'' range of problems, to a human measuring of scientific truths. However, the crisis of idealistic philosophical thought is far from being overcome, it is rather becoming more intense; and as to art, its very existence is in jeopardy.
The formula ``Death of Art" goes back to Hegel just as the absolutising of art can be traced back to Schelling's system. But no matter how Schelling or Hegel resolved the problem of whether art 98 or philosophy win out, the results are only variations of uniform patterns for moulding an absolute spirit.
Hegel's ``Death of Art" and Schelling's absolutising of art are in this sense phenomena of a similar order; they are similar in origin (from the absolute) and in content (a response of subjectivity to the absolute in the form of either contemplation or conception).
The gravitation towards art in modern bourgeois philosophy is explained from the position of subjectivistic anthropocentrism as an expression of man's urge to freedom as understood in the spirit of Kant's philosophy. The personality, the philosophical and aesthetic discovery of the Renaissance era, is given specific elaboration by Kant. He defines man, the personality, through freedom, through a breaching of the cause-and-effect continuum of nature. But what is the positive content of this freedom? And under what conditions is this breaching achieved? Freedom as a concept of reason must be viewed ``not as bestowed, but as a problem'',~^^1^^ moreover a problem beyond the powers of scientific and theoretical cognition. The end to which transcendency is directed is, according to Kant, an ``imagined focus" (focus imaginarius) of truth, beauty and goodness; in their unity, perceived by the mind, the `` ultra-sensual substratum of mankind" is revealed. The philosopher set aesthetics a cognitive task that proved beyond the powers of scientific and theoretical thought. Art appears in Kant on the brink of an unfulfilled scientific quest for a new type of causality set by the postulates of practical reason, i. e., a quest for the freedom of man.
Attention is usually drawn to the autonomy of the ethical and the. aesthetic in Kant. What is essential here is that the imperativeness of moral obligation is postulated, but the imperativeness of the aesthetic principle is manifested in the universal character of the subjective judgement of taste. However, this sometimes distracts researchers from the fact that the imperativeness of ethics and the universal validity of the aesthetic in Kant go back to a single source---to the principle of freedom as a profound attribute of the meaning of human existence. For ``taste is in essence the ability to judge the sensuous embodiment of moral concepts (by means of a certain analogy of the reflection on both) from which, and from the stronger receptivity based on this to the feeling proceeding from these concepts (called a sense of morals), that pleasure which taste declares valid for mankind in general and not only for the personal feelings of each is brought out".^^2^^ In this way, through the means _-_-_
~^^1^^ I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vemunft, Leipzig, 1971, S. 694
~^^2^^I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Leipzig, 1948, S. 217
99 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1976/MLAL268/20070615/199.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.06.15) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ of taste, the transition to the ``above-sensuous substratum of mankind" is realised. In the present case Kant's genius is displayed in the fact that he turned a category defying definition---taste---into a subtle instrument tor elucidating the ``secrets of transcendency'', and, with its help, mastered the mechanism for transcending to freedom.Consequently, the subject of freedom is given suffrage as such only after its sensuous perception has been brought into agreement with a sense of morals and it has been annexed to humaniora, ``by which people are distinguished from the limitedness of animals'',^^1^^ and only after its judgement has been premised by the culture of thinking and the ennobling of ``human senses"---here are meant the senses of the transcendental rather than the empirical subject.
The term humanitas, first used by the followers of Petrarch as a definition of the essence of man and human dignity, is used by Kant as well to substantiate the humanly valid principle of the aesthetic.^^2^^ And those attendant meanings---H:he general feeling of compassion, the ability to associate sincerely with other people, the sociability proper to mankind---noted by Kant clarify this conception and specify it in a broader conclusion about the fortunate combining of the discipline of the ``highest culture with the power and Tightness of free nature feeling its own worth".^^3^^
At the same time Kant's conception of humanism takes on the dramatic quality of appealing for a new historical synthesis. The universally valid content of freedom and the singularity of individual will constitute a contradiction which solidifies in the form of antinomy.
A truly scientific answer to the problem of man, to the problem of humanism can be found in the Marxist philosophy. Marx's classical formula states: ``The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations."^^4^^ Here the concept of man as a reasoning and social being receives equivalent theoretical expression. If we use an analogy with Marx's thesis ``wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections'',^^5^^ then the pithy richness of the Marxist concept of man depends on the complexity of the specific historical process developed in reality. Marxism sets as its goal to replace ``the cult of abstract man ... by the science of _-_-_
^^1^^ I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskrafi, Leipzig, 1948, S. 216
~^^2^^ Ibid
~^^3^^ Ibid
^^4^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works in three volumes.Vol. 1, Moscow, 1973, p. 14
^^5^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, Moscow, 1976, p. 51
100 real men and of their historical development".^^1^^ The modern French philosopher Lucien Seve legitimately defines Marxism as ``scientific humanism" (humanisme scientifique).^^2^^In modern bourgeois philosophy the crisis of the humanistic concepts and the phenomenon of alienation have brought about intensive attempts to validate a historically exhausted form of humanism. The anthropological abstract of man is called upon which, in Husserl's phenomenology, is given a certain gnosiological modernisation, and in existentialism---a subjectivistic anthropocentric motivation of freedom.
A digression into the sphere of philosophical principles is unavoidable here, since the context of the problems of the interaction of philosophy and art depends first and foremost on the concept of man.
The subjectivistic anthropocentrism as the dominant content of consciousness contradicts the concept of genuine human freedom. The very idea of a humanism which defines man as a reasoning social being is put in jeopardy here. The life ties which ensure the real content of the concept of freedom are severed.
Existentialism claims to be the ideal model of the reciprocal influence exercised by philosophy and art, where the rapprochement of competences is supposedly explained by the unity of the humanistic idea. But this only seems to be so, and in order to detect this 'it is necessary to expose the real purport of the basic philosophical principle of existentialism concealed by an abundance of ``authorised'' personalities who proceed from personal existentialist experience and by a variety of specific historical contexts defining the elaboration of compulsory existentialist themes. In connection with this the question arises: is there a stable internal form to such unequivalent phenomena as Heidegger's anti-humanistic invectives, the ``stoical anti-history" stand taken during the French Resistance and the theoretical complicity of existentialism with counter-cultural extremism? Is it possible to single out the substance invariant in such motley phenomena? Researchers are often content with an ethical standard for explaining the ambivalent manifestations of existentialism, losing sight of (evidently under the influence of psychologicalised terminology which casts its reflection on the content of concepts and, in particular, on the category of choice) the fact that on this point existentialism does not exceed the limits of Kantianism and _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selectied Works in three volumes, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1973, p. 360
~^^2^^Lucien Seve. Marxisme et theorie de la personnalite, Paris, 1969, p. 181
101 that the concept of freedom can appear, moreover, without attendant moral commandments. Therefore, to be content with the indeterminateness of morals, as the existentialists are. is the same as seeing only the whims of personal taste in the many different aesthetic positions connected with the ideas of existentialism--- from the rapprochement with art to the destruction of art. There is an analogy here, but its essence is revealed not in the isolated comparison of ethical or aesthetic phenomena, but rather in the very concept of man. the external expression of which these phenomena are. Therefore, if we examine the category of freedom of choice in the context of the existentialist frame of mind and even, following the logic of existentialist thinkers, include in the field of vision the possible aesthetic aspect of choice, thus showing the dual---aesthetic and ethical---semantic definiteness of the category of choice, we find ourselves in a situation where illusions are gradually being revealed.In considering the problem of the aesthetically motivated content of freedom or, more accurately, the possibility of aesthetic motivation in its existentialist understanding, we have to note that researchers often ignore the character of the aesthetic tradition kindred to modern existentialism. Its disappearing boundaries lead to Kierkegaard's vaguely described ``natural'' attitude to life. And it is typical that the Jena romanticists, a subject of Kierkegaard's critical meditations, only began to develop the concepts of the ``pagan'' aestheticism, which are solved nihilislically in Nietzsche. The romantic dominant of beauty did not rule out an intellectualism. a superstructure over the most subtle nuances of the unconscious. The fantasy and feelings of the romantic converted the sphere of all past cultures into its own material. Romantic individuality reigns over the universe. In this lies the meaning of romantic irony. Criticism was understood as the guarantee of boundless creativity, and though ravages, being implicit consequences of romantic self-will (``I'm the master of law and object and only play with them like with my fancy, and in this ironic consciousness, in which I allow the loftiest to perish, I only enjoy myself'')^^1^^ begin to be echoed in mood (Weltschmerz), they are not yet realised as logically inevitable.
Kierkegaard thought up for the romantics an inner logic and a prospect for developing in reality the principle of individualistic self-engrossment, and prognosticated that form of spiritual cul-dc-sac which he called ``despair'' and Nietzsche---``nihilism''. _-_-_
^^1^^ Hegels samtliche Werke, Bd. VI, ``Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts'', Leipzig, 1930, S.I30
102 Nietzsche consolidates Kierkegaard's foresight and biologicalises aesthetics, bluntly renaming it ``applied physiology'', and leaves to aesthetic feeling the role of intuitive indicator of the organism's orientation in the environment. Ethical and spiritual categories are rendered meaningless, as the very function of spirituality is perverted: the actions of the spirit lead not to freedom from the natural but. on the contrary, serve as mechanisms for inclusion into the indivisible streams of life; ``vigourousness''---this, strictly speaking, is. in Nietzsche, the ``mark of quality" for spiritual phenomena.Therefore, such an ``aestheticism'' of choice as the embodiment of an obviously logical contradiction forces one to doubt initial humanistic claims of existentialism.
While Kierkegaard, in opposition to the pagan aestheticism of the romantics, was elaborating the ethical motivation of freedom through the overcoming of despair, he was overtaken by the ``poetic justice" of the plays of Ibsen, who already felt the icy emptiness of ``nothing''. In Brand's futile enthusiasm we find the whole ``unblessed'' future of existentialism.
The asocial motivation of the personality equalises the results of the mutually excluding theoretical intentions of biologicalism and mysticism. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, who would seem to be antipodes in the kinds of philosophical goals they set, discovered, over the perspective of time, the essential common character of ontological premises and conclusions and stimulated homogeneous regressive trends.
Sartre, Camus, and Merleau-Ponty rearrange the focus of philosophising: ``body'' takes the place of ``soul''. ``Body'' is a more striking concept than the old ``soul'',^^1^^ wrote Nietzsche. But even more significant is the exploitation of this ``concept'' in the theoretical quests of Kierkegaard's spiritual successors and the adherents to the methodology of Husserl as well, who eliminated the psycho-physiological structure, i. e.,``body'', with the very same intention with which it will subsequently be postulated in the capacity of the central working concept of existentialism--- ostensibly in the interests of a humanistic substantiation of philosophy and the freedom of the personality.
Analogical processes are also taking place in the modern art of the West. They extort bitter lamenting from artists who don't want to acknowledge ``the end of man" or reconcile themselves to spiritual disintegration, moral degradation, and vandalism. Faulkner's famous Nobel Prize acceptance speech was a _-_-_
^^1^^ F. Nietzsche. Werke, Sechster Band, Leipzig, 1930, S. 440
103 condemnation of the faceless and thoughtless debauch of illusory freedom. ``There are no longer problems of the spirit.... The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself.... He writes not of the heart but of the glands.... Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man.''^^1^^ It is typical that Camus, alarmed by the immorality of his own artistic conclusions, inasmuch as the end of man is subsequently modelled in the philosophical and artistic practice of existentialism, turns to this great writer, an adherent to the realist principle of creativity.Such is the paradox of the subjectivistic anthropocentrism with its theoretical mechanism of polarising the ripening antagonisms between the ``real'' and the socialised ``I'', between the spontaneous impulse of senses and the instrumentalism of rational thought.
The hidden starting point for existentialism's criticism of preceding culture is biologism. Here lies the source of energy necessary for existentialism in its attempt to ``breach'' the general limits of the philosophical tradition of the ``new age" and mainly the orbit of Kant's philosophy. For Kantian ``moral obliligation" was permeated yet by a profound emanation of the humanistic conception of man and personality revealed through freedom of goals.
In his famous lecture ``Existentialism is Humanism" Sartre sides with Kant, however only on the level of abstract ethical claims: ``Kant declares that freedom wants itself and the freedom of others. Agreed."^^2^^ However, as the existentialist impulse takes the shape of a category the romantic halo of ``freedom'' loses its lustre, and the prosaic seamy side of ``anxiety'', ``concern'', and ``fear'' reveals the great social timidity typical of conformist bourgeois individualism and quite a limited area for the realisation of freedom, inasmuch as existentialist man is free only within the limits of the ``situation'' to which he is chained by real life circumstances. Man is ``free'' in ecstatic modulation to suffer through the initial tragedy of being. ``Man is useless passion.'' Every life situation turns out to be a ``frontier'' one; life is always doomed to death. In postulating the triumph of subjectivity, existentialism excludes man from the cultural historical process and turns every step beyond the bounds of ``I'' into an illusion. ``Our physiological make-up allows us to express only symbolically and on the grounds of absolute contingency the constant possibility _-_-_
^^1^^ William Faulkner, ``Address upon Receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature'', Essays, Speeches and Public Letters, London, 1967, pp. 119--20
~^^2^^Jean-Paul Sartre, L'existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris, 1952, p. 85
104 which we are,''^^1^^ affirms Sartre, unwittingly exposing the fictitious character of existentialist innovations. The ``freedom'' proclaimed by existentialism as the foundation of 'spiritual values and the essence-bearing ontological characteristic of man turns out in the end to be the voluntary, spontaneous outburst of a disintegrated individual.``By the measure in which existentialism tends to enclose the individual in an interior of false consciousness ... leaving him powerless to the utmost extent, he is only one of the last avatars of speculative anthropology, the ideological expression of the eternal relapse of the revolt into a customary alienation."^^2^^ The contradictions between the individualism of bourgeois consciousness and the humanistic aims of philosophy are expressed in the form of distorting the idea of humanism: man is alienated from human essence.
The most profound secret of existentialism is---nothing, emptiness generated as a result. Therefore, it is possible to catch the meaning of it only in negative definitions of what is the object of denial, what is subject to exploitation, and what valuable accumulations of spiritual culture are squandered.
Existentialism resolves the problem of the attitude towards art in the general manner of consumerism typical of it as regards cultural resources, which is tantamount to their destruction. When this is found in the artistic phenomena stimulated by existentialism one can see, in the wonfeof Shakespeare's Pplonius, its own order, and a certain coherence.
In joining the tradition of artistic thought, where the topics of the meaning or meaninglessness of human life, which were excluded by the absolute thinking of Kant from the competence of scientific theoretical knowledge, continue to thrive, existentialism, however, didn't offer any new ideas. Only the appearance is created that ``that merging of the critical and poetic spheres, which was begun by the romantics and was powerfully stimulated by the philosophical lyricism of Nietzsche'', is realised in its production, that ``the process obliterates the boundaries between science and art, infuses live pulsating blood into abstract thought, and inspires the plastic image."^^3^^
Giving this imaginary apology as an example in his article ``On the Ideas of Spengler" (Uberdie Lehre Spenglers), it is no accident that Thomas Mann subsequently proceeds to expose the banality, scientific inarticulateness, and cultural desertion concealed by the _-_-_
^^1^^ Jean-Paul Sartre, L'etre et le ntant, Paris, 1943, p. 477
~^^2^^Lucien Seve, Marxisme et thiorie de la personnalite, Paris, 1969, p. 482
^^3^^ Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke, Elfter Band, Berlin, 1955, S. 166 .
105 ``brilliance of literary exposition and intuitive rhapsodic style" of Spengler himself---this ``defeatist of the human race" as the unusually discreet Thomas Mann calls him. Indeed, for the artist possessing the richness of language, the value of thought dependent upon the metaphorical inertia of meaning and upon the euphony of ``rhapsodic'' singing is highly doubtful.A style similar to this blossomed forth in existentialism, and above all in Heidegger. Georg Mende characterises his terminology and method of treating concepts by the term ``expressionism''.~^^1^^ However, Heidegger was far from the first to display a skilful use of both etymological layers of language and artistic metaphors; all this was already well-known to aesthetics and art criticism and was not a revelation of existentialism.
Art itself was an even richer object for exploitation by existentialism. Camus saw this immediately: ``If you want to be a philosopher, write novels."^^2^^ He is seconded by Simone de Beauvoir: ``If the description of essence depends upon philosophy itself, then only the novel permits one to communicate the original seething of existence in all its complete, singular, temporal reality."^^3^^ To the extent that this art is art, it undoubtedly exceeds the theoretical possibilities of existentialist thinking. It includes traces of figurative potential which live right up to their extreme decay---in the very material of art, in the elements of plasticity, in the artistic traditions, collisions and characters, perfected over the ages, and in the semantic richness of language. Existentialism exploits a whole series of the primary virtues of art for its own aims. But can we explain as chance the fact that existentialism, for which the ``individual'', ``specific'', ``live'' man becomes the focus of problems for<philosophical thought, and the aestheticising of the facts of his experience in life claims to elevate them to the level of ontological predicates, did not create any significant characters? All the important roles in existentialist collisions belong to eternal characters, to prepared formulae of typification---discoveries already made by the artistic thought of mankind. Namely from this Pantheon of artistic thought does existentialism borrow the suitable figures of heroes and martyrs. However, its own philosophical aims did not call into being a single image even remotely resembling the characters of (Teat art. Existentialist literature describes man mainly througn negative _-_-_
^^1^^ Georg Mende, Studien fiber die Existenzphilosophie, Berlin, 1956, S. 134
^^2^^ Albert Camus, Garnets, I, Paris, 1962, p. 33
^^3^^ Simonede Beauvoir,``Litt\'erature et m\'etaphysique'',ies TempsModernes, No. 7, avril 1946, pp. 1160--61
106 definitions. Its genuine hero----``The Outsider"---is a zero personality, mortally wounded by the ``discovery'' of his mortality even before the narrative begins. He personifies ``life to death'', the forlornness of the ``naked among wolves'', the freely-made choice of the unintentional murderer, consciously departing from the anxiety of intellectual life, from the ``despotism'' of Reason for a sojourn in ``existence as it is''. As an individual he is lost in this ``involvement in life'', acquires the passive resignation of a plant in order to suffer the meaningless execution predetermined by hostile reason.The Outsider completes a definite stage in existentialism's disintegrating ties with the world of human culture.
The antitheses put forward by existentialism to counter balance the ``non-authenticity'' of the historically formed status of philosophy are formulated as postulates for likening philosophy to art, which possesses the advantage of spontaneity and universality of the authentic concept that ensures a fixation of the parameters of human life that were ``consigned to oblivion''. However, in the present case the means contradict the end: the vast expanse of the ``world of life" in a work of art is reduced to the sensuous qualities of the individual locked in the psycho-physiological limits of the ``body''. The substance of an artistic image possessing the advantage of a many-faceted aesthetic solution and a capacious image, embodying in a small form the large world of historical time, is reduced to a simple sensuous substance, to that ``directly given''.
The hopelessness of aesthetic tests based on the idea of the biopsychic essence of man and the phobia for reason, which ostensibly distorted, beginning with the Renaissance, the face of culture, was unwittingly proved by Herbert Read. While not a profound analyst, he is nevertheless interesting as a ``chronicler'' of the catastrophic results of the reciprocal influences exercised by the newest idealistic philosophy and modernistic art and of the attempts to ``play out" all the possible variations of the rapprochement of philosophy and art with the view of overcoming the general cultural and philosophical crisis of the Western world.
Captivated by Heidegger's apology of art Read almost literally reproduces his idea (which received broad response in the most diversified versions of existentialism) that the philosopher must be an artist who shapes man's existence. In convincing himself and his readers that the language of plasticity is heir to the language of philosophy, which had lost its live impulses, Herbert Read reaches a climax in his exposition of ``new realities''. Thus the more typical is the dismal conclusion: ``We have now reached a stage of 107 relativism in philosophy where it is possible to affirm that reality is in fact subjectivity, which means that the individual has no choice but to construct his own reality, however arbitrary and even ` absurd' that may seem. This is the position reached by the Existentialists, and to it corresponds a position in the world of art that requires a similar decision."^^1^^
The fervour of the allegedly humanistic declarations of modern bourgeois philosophers and aestheticians obscures the parallelism of destructive processes of the same type: the exclusion of the individual from concrete historical civic-social ties precedes the exclusion of the image from the broad context of the artisticaesthetic whole. Biopsychological reasoning of aesthetic activity entails the ontologising of the supra-historical nature of man. Vitalism in interpreting human nature theoretically prepared the destruction of culture and art long before the ``new Left" began doing this in real earnest. Disconnected and absolutised predicates of the aesthetic bear the prerequisites for the biologisation of the human essence of man and the process of the elimination of art as such.
In contrast to this true art preserves the existence of ``human measuring" and the intellectual reserves of the genus of homo sapiens. The embodiment of the complex dialectics of life ties is presupposed by the very nature of art, which is directly included in the process of the aesthetic assimilation of reality, both in the creative act of the artist and in the perception equivalent to it.
No matter in what technique art tries its hand, the true artist is inspired by a sense of realism and involvement in life and the spiritual experience of contemporaneity. Art is competent to ``play over" the chosen theme on the keyboard of subtly nuanced aesthetic gradations---from fervour to irony. This wide scope of possibilities to research allows thinking artists not only to create impressive human characters but also to express the integrated sense of the spiritual make-up of the era, the historically specific types of consciousness, their reciprocal influences, historical role, temporary limits and universal value. True realist art reveals the vital content of the problems raised and the real prospects for their development. We must not forget the artist's personal responsibility which is objectified in the artistic world of his work in a lyrically passionate or epically profound form.
In the light of everything stated above the formula ``Death of _-_-_
^^1^^ Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Modem Art, London, 1952, p. 21
108 Art" presents itself not simply as an unexpected whim of the ideological concepts of the radical Left but as a natural result of the metaphysical concept of the personality and asocial motivation of the essence of human nature as well.The sudjectivistic anthropocentric ``planning'' of freedom retains only superficial terminological ties with humanistic tradition: such an anthropocentrism alienates man from human nature, the essence of which lies in its social character. The protest against a socio-cultural determination of the personality replaces it with a psycho-physiological determination, immediately transforming any going beyond the bounds of ``I'' into illusion. Freedom turns out to be only a spontaneous outburst of the disintegrated individual, a ``rebellion in shackles''. The spiritual stupor of the characters of drama of the absurd is a stage metaphor of the self-abolition of man, an artistic analogue of a corresponding philosophical concept.
The position of ``anti-reason'' turned out to be a unifying principle of the poetic system and aesthetics of modernism. The negation of the objective logic of life found its expression in the absurdism of artistic logic.
Withdrawal from reality, anticipation of discoveries motivated by the logic of ``miracle'', and initial distrust of reason presuppose a spontaneous flow of the ``stream'' of consciousness. In addition, the aesthetic is lowered in its status and level.
Joyce, one of the pioneers of avant-gardism and initiators of the technique of ``stream of consciousness'', felt the danger of a vulgar reduction of the aesthetic. The subject is debated in the dialogue of Stephen Dedalus and the character with pathological traits who is incapable of a non-literal perception of art. A work of art exists not for people to rush off in pursuit of it, not for tempting primitive sensuality, and not for a literalisation of imagery. Aesthetic emotion ennobles the mind and forces one to linger in thought: to concentrate on the profound, intransient, and meaningful in man. Joyce, through the words of Stephen Dedalus, interprets the classical position of aesthetics: ``~`Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetik or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an aesthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror....
`` 'The aesthetic emotion ... is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.'
``~`~You say that art must not excite desire.... I told you that one day I wrote my name in pencil on the backside of the Venus of Praxiteles.... Was that not desire?'
109`` 'I speak of normal natures,' said Stephen. 'You also told me that when you were a boy in that charming carmelite school you ate pieces of dried cowdung.'~"^^1^^
In the pages of the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the character with the pathological traits is smitten by the arguments of the artist. However, in the real theoretical and practical embodiment of the method of the ``stream of consciousness" pathology wins out. The literalisation of resemblance to life and the adaptation of separate devices snatched out of the whole to the views of ``new sensuality" and to a biopsychic subjective interpretation of human essence are scientifically invalid acts.
An aesthetic object presupposes a remoteness of perception. The artist can place his work in a real expanse of life, but it will remain in the aura of artistic creation; in our perception it retains its pedestal. Aesthetic emotion takes priority among ``theorising emotions''. An aesthetic value directly perceived by senses cannot be reduced to the material substratum of a work of art. An image arouses contemplation; art mobilises the spiritual powers and tunes up the cognitive abilities for understanding the humanly meaningful sense of reality, opening the door for solving the agelong enigma: ``what man makes of his life and what his life makes of him".^^2^^
The modernist reinterpretation of the role of art reserves other functions for it, that which Joyce or his alter ego Stephen Dedalus would call a mobilisation of kinetic emotions.
Marxist theory holds a clear position in respect to the phenomenon of the neo-avant-gardist experiment in art and in aesthetics. The attempts to absolutise fantasy and the Utopian illusions connected with the activisation of ``aesthetic senses" were given a timely, valid evaluation. ``The tendency to isolate aesthetic senses from rational (theoretical) consciosness is the way to disintegrate the senses, the artistic form itself,"^^3^^ wrote E. Ilyenkov more than ten years ago, expressing the general view of Marxist scholars. Today we can appreciate the truth of this methodological foresight.
The modernist formula ``Death of Art" is logically grounded by the isolation of ``aesthetic senses" from rational consciousness, by the aesthtic of the absurd and anti-reason. The ambivalent motives _-_-_
^^1^^ James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1966, pp. 205--06
~^^2^^ Lucien Seve, Marxisme et theorie de la personnalite, Paris, 1969, p. 502
~^^3^^E. V. Ilyenkov, ``On the Aesthetic Nature of Fantasy'', Questions of Aesthetics, a Collection, Moscow, 1964, p. 52 (in Russian)
110 of dehumanisation are solved here unequivocally. The removal from art of a well-shaped human character, plot clarity, meaningful life collisions, and the intellectual and emotional defmiteness of lyricism is concluded by the final destructive act---the annihilation of art itself.The principle of subjectivistic anthropocentrism in a regressing ideological context revealed an unforesen charge of destructive activism. The question is by no means in whether philosophy and art will trade their inherent subjects and functions in serving the historically exhausted form of humanism (in which lay the meaning of the initial existentialist hopes), but rather in the affirmation, by the means of both philosophy and art, of a new humanism of a loftier kind.
And Marxist-Leninist aesthetics is making its contribution to its substantiation.
The true freedom of man is revealed in revolutionary social practice, in progressive historical creativity. Humanist problems, included from the outset in the content of MarxistLeninist philosophy, are given their adequate artistic expression in the art of socialist realism.
The thinking man, the true hero of contemporaneity, finds his artistic portrayal in socialist realist art, which possesses the advantage of organic ties with a genuine scientific world outlook and a direct affinity with the world of progressive philosophical ideas which stimulate his spiritual growth.
A profound study of the personality being formed in the living history of socialist construction also reveals the power of the new method of an art armed with a scientific world outlook. The adequacy of artistic thinking to historical progress and the depth of intellect characteristic of the works of our art allow us to speak of a new stage in the artistic development of all progressive mankind. Personality, in all its human magnitude, and society, developing in accordance with the realised idea of the historical creativity of the masses, is the dominant theme of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and socialist realist art.
[111] __ALPHA_LVL2__ ON THE QUESTION OF EXPRESSIVENESSY. Khachikyan
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.The question of the correlation between representativeness and expressiveness has been a focus of constant attention both for practicing artists and theoreticians of art. This is quite natural in the light of the close affinity of this problem to that of discovering the nature of artistic cognition, as well as to that of classifying the arts.
The assertion that every fully valid artistic image is a unity of representativeness and expressiveness is often met in writings on aesthetics.
Existing definitions resemble one another in that almost all of them link the concept of ``representativeness'' to the reflection of the external, sensually perceived aspect of real phenomena and that of ``expressiveness'' to the reflection of their inner essence. While we do not in principle object to such a differentiation, since it is, in a certain sense, a just one, we must nevertheless emphasise that it is too general in character. At a certain point it is contiguous with a differentiation between the categories of phenomenon and essence and is, therefore, applicable not just to art alone. But even these closely related definitions differ one from the other. Thus, man's thoughts and feelings---his spiritual traits---belong in the one case to the representative side of art and in the other, to the expressive side; one writer will view representation as being, without reservations, a reflection of the external, sensually perceived appearance of the world, while another will see it as the reflection primarily of this appearance; in one case expression will be characterised as a property of the work of art, in another it will be viewed as an ability of the artist, and so on.
It is our view that definitions of the categories of `` 112 representativeness" and ``expressiveness'' must at the very least meet the following conditions: 1) they must be specific to art and not coincide with the usual, non-terminological meaning of these words and 2) they must characterise all art and not individual forms of it.
We shall make two further qualifications. Firstly, the gnosiological nature of representativeness and expressiveness in art must be clearly realised. Both categories are the product of the process of reflection. However, although writings on aesthetics and art generally treat the former in this way (hardly anyone would seriously speak of the representativeness of, for example, a mountain or a tree), the concept of expressiveness is sometimes used to characterise phenomena in the external world, which is fundamentally incorrect.
Secondly, it is necessary to realise just as clearly that expressiveness in art possesses an artistically cognitive and not a general gnosiological character. The task is to reveal the essence of expressiveness as a category of art. Meanwhile some authors, in characterising expressiveness as a gnosiological phenomenon, fail to notice or to take into account its specifically artistic features.
Inconsistency in interpreting representativeness and expressiveness leads to contradictory comparative evaluations of their place and significance in a work of art. Of course, the thesis that representativeness alone is insufficient to be considered art, while expressiveness is unattainable without representativeness is, in general, profoundly correct. However, additional clarification of the subordination of the two aspects under consideration is required within, of course, the framework of their unity. The question of the predominance of one of them is very important. Here it must be remembered that this problem is not automatically dismissed by the acknowledgement of unity. It is not by chance that the majority of writers asserting this unity proceed, at the same time, from the principle of the predominance either of representativeness or of expressiveness.
In this connection we wish to examine critically an opinion which, in all its apparent veracity, seems to us to be erroneous. This view declares that the aim of art is representativeness: an error rooted, in our opinion, in the belief that any feature or quality of reflection is linked exclusively to representativeness.
An approach of this kind tacitly allows for the possibility of erroneously concluding that the expressive aspect of art is not involved in reflection.
However, both the representative and expressive sides of a work of art represent a reflection of reality; but this reflection is, as it were, on different levels. Representativeness is direct, primary 113 reflection, while expressiveness is mediated and derivative reflection. The former is a necessary basis for revealing the latter, since the former represents the result of fixing real phenomena, which are being reflected, by material means, and it is through the former that their aesthetic significance is revealed. But if, nevertheless, disclosing and embodying the aesthetic value of real phenomena is the aim of artistic cognition, then however high a value we place on the cognitive significance of the representative aspect, it is expressiveness, as an indicator of the aesthetic, that will testify to the full value of artistic cognition. We are thus entitled to assert, in stating the unity of representativeness and expressiveness, that the latter is the aim of art, while the former is the means of achieving it. This, we propose, by no means minimises the role and significance of representativeness but, on the contrary, emphasises its absolute necessity in art, since - direct, pure expressiveness does not and cannot exist apart from representativeness. However, while representativeness is the necessary basis for and bearer of expressiveness, the former is not identical to the latter and does not automatically lead to it. Otherwise any representation would be expressive and by its expressiveness be equal to any other representation of one and the same object.
A work of art is expressive when it conveys more than it represents. If, in a work, representation in itself exhausts the content of that work, then the latter is not expressive. Expressiveness demands an extra, special effort on the part of the artist over and above what is required for representation as such.
The fact that expressiveness, however defined, is a universal feature of art is not a matter for dispute. Whether representativeness is an equally universal feature or whether it is inherent only in specific forms of art does, however, provide grounds for contention.
The classification of the arts into representative and nonrepresentative possesses only one unquestionable virtue: the terminology here does not allow any doubt concerning the universal character of expressiveness.
However questions immediately arise: on what basis is expressiveness attained in non-representative arts, for example? What is the non-representative basis of the image like? How and in what is the bond between a work of non-representative art and reality manifested? For it is impossible to see this bond only in the material aspect of a work of art.
What is important is representation which is realised with the help of material means, that is, by transferring certain aspects and manifestations of reality into a work of art and depicting them in it.
114If the term ``representative'', although interpreted in different ways, characterises specifically the primary, necessary reflection of reality in art, then the term ``non-representative'' is too vague. Lacking its own positive content, it denotes at best a negation of what is revealed and embraced by the term ``representative''. And it is not surprising that writers who use the term `` non-representative" seldom burden themselves with the task 'of revealing its content, although, as a rule, they always define the opposite, positive term.
Recently the long dominant and yet to be fully overcome trends in aesthetics towards an excessive concentration on literature have come under increasing criticism. Such criticism is useful, as it promotes the elaboration of universal, genuinely aesthetic categories and principles, but its scope must be extended to include trends towards excessive concentration on painting which are evident, in particular, in the interpretation of representativeness. However, the embracement of the whole of art within a single principle is ``prevented'' not so much by the representativeness of some arts and the non-representativeness of others as by the fact that representativeness in art is often identified with a representativeness specific only to certain arts, in particular, painting. Paradoxically, this is sometimes done by those who limit the sphere of representativeness in art and by those who recognise it as a universal attribute of art.
The appearance of tendencies towards excessive concentration on painting in interpreting ``representativeness'', with all the consequences that follow from this, is, of course, not fortuitous.
The crux of the matter is that the problem of the correlation of representativeness and expressiveness was elaborated within the framework of the so-called ``representative'' arts (painting, sculpture and drawing)---and, above all, of painting---prior to and .more fully than in the other arts. A consequence of this is, in particular, that the representativeness specific to painting has come to be perceived and understood as representativeness in general. This is why some deny representativeness in a number of arts, while others, acknowledging it as a universal category in art, seek, very unconvincingly, to refer to the type of representativeness specific to painting. On the other hand, the striving to interpret representativeness as a conformity of reproduction to the visual aspect of things and objects is linked to the dominant role of visual images in the cognition of the world and, correspondingly, in the activity of our imagination.
Visual images arc, of course, cognitively the richest and most valuable. It is also indisputable that the functioning imagination 115 does invariably recreate and reconstruct in the memory the visual aspect of the world as well. However, it is incorrect to apply the term ``representativeness'' to two qualitatively different things: namely, to the visual aspect of the world of objects as reproduced in a work of art and to the visual images which arise in our imagination by association. Yet some, who speak of representativeness in music, too, having in mind the imitation of sounds, see the meaning and significance of such imitation in its stimulating of visual images that arise by association.
This approach to the issue is unacceptable, since it is in fact based on an inadmissible substitution of the perception of the visual aspect of an object by its mental reproduction. Moreover, it tacitly passes over the fact that visual images within the imagination can arise by association together with images of another character in the perception of a work belonging to any form of art, including perception of the visual images in painting, and that visual images within the imagination are by no means a monopoly of those arts in which a visible picture of reality is absent.
The truth obviously is that representativeness and expressiveness manifest themselves in each form of art in a way specific to that form. It is, therefore, inadmissible to project their concrete embodiment in one form of art on to other forms and, consequently, such definitions of representativeness and expressiveness are needed which would be applicable to all forms of art.
A general definition of expressiveness is the ability to convey something vividly and figuratively in art. However, what this ``something'' is must be more precisely defined if the concept of ``expressiveness'' is not to lose its specific meaning and significance and remain within the limits of its usual meaning. The essence of the problem consists in what art should express and how it should do this in order to acquire artistic expressiveness.
At the same time it is clear that the attempt to define expressiveness in art as the ability to reflect man's inner state through his external appearance explains only one of the manifestations of expressiveness in art while failing to define it as a universal category of art as a whole. In this connection we should like to examine in more detail how expressiveness manifests itself in portraiture.
In a portrait the representative principle is usually linked to reproduction of the features and external aspect of the subject generally; the expressive principle is linked to conveyance of the subject's inner spiritual state. A portrait, whether a piece of sculpture, a painting or a drawing, would not really be of artistic value if, for example, reproducing only the external features of a 116 person, it did not possess psychological value and.failed to express his inner world.
Psychological expressiveness results from the realisation of a dual aim---the embodiment in a work of the objective and the subjective---and is manifested on two levels. These are, firstly, the discovering of the essence and inner meaning of the reflected phenomena and, secondly, the revealing of the artist's attitude to these phenomena. But these two aspects are not encountered separately, but in a unity. The objective is always coloured and ``animated'' by the artist's attitude towards it. This relationship is already present in the very fact of comprehending the essence of what is reflected. The subjective acquires meaning and can be realised only when the objective is present, since expressiveness on the subjective level, mediated through the artist's attitude, always presupposes an object, the attitude to which is being expressed. This is why the unity of objective and subjective features is an indispensable condition for expressiveness; moreover, a psychological characterisation, however subtle and profound, does not attain true artistic expressiveness or become a fully valid artistic fact if it has not conveyed the artist's attitude towards what is being represented. It should be added that reflection of the spiritual world of a character forms a component of expressiveness only in those artistic forms and genres which directly depict man.
Thus, the expressiveness of the human face and body in life and in art cannot, for all their closeness, be identified. In the former case such expressiveness represents a real fact, in the latter, the result of the cognition of reality. In life it is a characteristic of the features of a definite person; in certain forms and genres of art it is itself one of the components of artistic expressiveness. Expressiveness in art is, further, an indicator of the aesthetically significant, showing the necessary ability of a work of art to convey and reveal the aesthetic content of that which is reflected. Therefore, the portrayal of an expressive human face, for example, attains the significance of artistic expressiveness only to the degree in which it contains, in addition to everything mentioned above, an aesthetic evaluation as well. But expressiveness is perceived emotionally, not rationally. No logical arguments can demonstrate the expressiveness of a work of art if it lacks emotional impact. Expressiveness in art is always linked with emotional and aesthetic reality. In a certain sense it can be said that the concept of the expressiveness of a work of art outside its emotional and aesthetic impact is meaningless, although on the other hand, expressiveness is more than emotional and aesthetic effectiveness.
117Expressiveness is invariably linked with the figurativeness in art. In our view, expressiveness in art should be understood to mean the ability of a work of art or, more precisely, of its representative aspect, to convey emotionally to those perceiving it an aesthetically treated complex of ideas and feelings, in which the essence of what is reflected and the artist's attitude to it are simultaneously revealed. A work of art is not expressive if it does not possess all these qualities.
The question arises in connection with this of whether expressiveness is inherent in the objects and phenomena of reality attributively or whether they acquire this quality only in works of art after passing through the crucible of artistic cognition.
We recognise the complexity and contentiousness of this question and make no claim to resolve it; rather, we wish only to express doubt concerning the legitimacy of the concept of ``the expressiveness of life''. We believe that in this case it will not be enough just to make reservations warning against the identification of expressiveness in life with expressiveness in art.
In non-terminological, general usage, ``expressiveness'' is interpreted in at least three ways: as meaningfulness (significance); as the vivid, figurative conveyance and disclosure of something and, finally, as the reflection of man's inner state through his outward appearance. The last interpretation has already been discussed in connection with portraiture and from what was noted it followed, firstly, that psychological expressiveness, while forming a component of artistic expressiveness in some artistic forms and genres is, at the same time, not identical with or equivalent to the concept of ``artistic expressiveness''. Secondly, it followed that expressiveness in this sense (outside art) is applicable only to man.
It may readily be noted that the two other meanings attached in common usage to ``expressiveness'' also predominantly characterise man, his actions or, at least, the work of his hand and mind and are not applicable to all manifestations of reality.
Thus, the concept of ``artistic expressiveness" is not applicable to reality by virtue of its gnosiological character, while the everyday meanings attached to the same word are similarly inapplicable because they lack universality and cannot be applied to all phenomena in the objective world. In short, the question of what is expressiveness in life as a basis for expressiveness in art remains essentially open.
The phrase ``the expressiveness of life" is imprecise and, we consider, denotes something else---apparently, life's emotional and aesthetic impact---since this feature is, firstly, inherent both in art and reality (notwithstanding the difference between reflection and 118 that which is reflected) and, secondly, is an essential component of artistic expressiveness.
In reality emotional and aesthetic impact appears in the process of direct, spontaneous perception of objects and phenomena.
In art the emotional and aesthetic impact of nature reflected is an important component of expressiveness (by no means exhausting it or being reduced to it) and a result of artistic cognition. A painter does not simply reproduce an aspect of nature that has stirred him, but simultaneously embodies his feelings and emotional attitude towards what has been reproduced; through his painting he shows both what has stirred him and why. This already testifies to the expressiveness and not simply to the emotional and aesthetic impact of a work of art. Emotional and aesthetic impact and expressiveness are sometimes mistakenly identified; the latter is used to characterise emotional and aesthetic impact only because expressiveness itself unquestionably possesses this feature.
[119] __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE GNOSIOLOGICAL NATURE OF AN ICONY. Bassln
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.Icon is an important gnosiological concept, ranking with such concepts as image, sign, model, etc. The theoretical ``biography'' of this concept has much in common with the ``biography'' of the model. Like models, icons have become an object of philosophical analysis only comparatively recently and are arousing growing interest; at the same time the utilisation of icons in various fields of activity is returning us to our distant past.
The growing theoretical interest in icons is the result of a variety of reasons. The rapid development in the technical means of obtaining icons (photographic icons, cinematic icons, etc.) and transmitting them over long distances (television, the telegraphing of photographs, etc.) has led to an unusually extensive dissemination of icons in all fields of human activity and in everyday life. Creation of a general theory of icon has acquired especial significance in connection with the solution of the problem of recognising icons by technical devices (perceptrons) as well as of a whole range of problems in engineering psychology. Aesthetics, too, is conscious of the need for special examination of the concept of ``an icon''.
A notable increase in the use of the terms ``an icon" and ``iconic'', both in art history and in philosophical, scientific and technical writing, directly reflects the close attention being devoted to the problem of an icon. Aesthetics and art history talk of artistic icon' semiotics---of the iconic sign, model theory---of iconic models, the theory of signals---of icons-signals, psycho-physiological bionics---of psychic icons, and so on. The term ``an icon" (and, correspondingly, ``iconic'') has by no means the same meaning in all these usages, which leads to serious difficulties in theoretical research.
120In connection with the above, it is important to clarify the nature of the concept under examination, establish the general and fundamental features of an icon, analyse its gnosiological functions and elucidate the correlation between this concept and the concepts of isomorphism, image, sign and model.
A general theory of icon is still in the process of formation and it is, therefore, impossible at present to define precisely the concept of an ``icon''. Instead, the author has set himself the more modest goal of formulating a number of essential conditions which must be met by any sufficiently general definition of an icon.
It is not difficult to elicit, on the basis of inductive generalisation from numerous cases in which objects function as icons (whether these objects be drawings, photographs, traces, etc.) that in every case an icon is spoken of when an object stands in a relationship of similarity to another object. The problem, therefore, consists in making the degree of this similarity more precise. It is impossible to do this by inductive, empirical means, since the application of the term ``an icon" both in aesthetics and in technology and everyday life, does not, as a rule, rest on firmly established criteria. In noting this difficulty, a number of researchers have proposed to circumvent it by eliminating the dichotomy of ``iconic'' and `` non-iconic" and replacing it by a scale marking off degrees of iconic representation. Since iconic representation lacks strict criteria, the essence of the matter lies in the degree of its presence. Such an approach, it is thought, does away with the problem of determining which combination of properties meets the definition of iconic representation.
We believe that it is more profitable to bring out the significance of the concept of an icon by means of limiting the most general concept of similarity, which is the concept of isomorphism (or homomorphism as its extreme) elaborated in mathematics.
Before describing this method, we should note that we view icon as a gnosiological concept. This means that the mere presence of a definite similarity between an object and its original does not make the object an icon. It becomes such when a subject becomes aware of the existing objective similarity in the process of correlating the object and the original. This is why, strictly speaking, it is not the concept of an icon which derives from the concept of isomorphism, but rather the concept of that degree of similarity which exists objectively and is the necessary ontological basis (or a prerequisite) of an icon.
121The concept of isomorphism is, in the narrow sense of the word, applicable only in relation to abstract (mathematical, logical) systems. No relationship of absolute isomorphism is ever observed between the members of systems of real objects (which, as a rule, include icons applied in art and also in technology and everyday life). In general, not every characteristic of the elements of an object or even all the elements are reproduced and preserved in an icon. Similarly, not all the particular features of their organisation are reproduced, but only a certain number. Can systems which reproduce only individual, discrete properties of an original be called icons? Which combination of reproduced properties (and which properties) is necessary if a system is to function as an icon and in what does the objective criterion for determining this combination consist? Answers must be provided to all these questions if the concept of ``an icon" is to be defined.
It evidently serves no purpose to call a whole system an icon when only separate, individual properties of the original similar to the object are reproduced and preserved. In this case it can only be stated that an icon of certain properties or relationships is present in the given system. For example, in a recording of a television icon on videotape the one-dimensional sequence of the elements in a series is preserved and reproduced and remains invariant (that is, is represented by an icon). Other properties of spatial and temporal regulation, such as form, metre and so on, are transformed, remaining, however, isomorphic properties of the original. It is said of such properties, not that they are represented, but that they are coded in a given system.
Let us turn briefly to the term ``coding''. Its application presupposes a knowledge of the code or cipher: a knowledge of the exact rules for transition from the properties of the original to the isomorphism of its reflection in a given system. In cases where these rules are not precisely observed another term---``expression''---is preferable. Thus, for example, it is more accurate to say of drawings in which the dimensions of the original are transformed in respect to scale that the size and dimensions of the original are not coded but ``expressed'' in them.
But is it meaningful to talk of an icon as such in a case where absolute isomorphism is absent?
It is relatively easier to answer this question when considering systems to which the concept of physical similarity elaborated in the theory of similarity is extended. The latter is confined to establishing a correlation of this kind between qualitatively homogeneous objects and phenomena; in the theory of similarity an objective criterion---a constant of similarity---is worked out. 122 Systems, as we know, possess geometrical, dynamic or cinematic similarity. If any two systems stand in a relationship of physical similarity, there is a basis for asserting that the ontological prerequisite exists for one of these systems to function as an icon. The majority of icons we encounter in the visual arts (for example, photographic, cinematic or televisual icons) are built on this principle. Thus, the ontological basis of the majority of icons is the relationship of similarity. Depending on the number of coded (or expressed) properties, we can talk of greater or lesser conventionality of an icon. If reproduced properties are only coded (or expressed) without there being a similarity between the given system as a whole and the original, it is not possible to speak of an icon.^^1^^
A further ontological prerequisite for an icon that is advanced is that of integrity. Integrity represents a combination of component parts which is characterised by interdependence between the parts and an absence of their autonomy. Integrity as an ontological feature is evidently inherent only to icons, each of which is in itself an ``organic'' whole. For example, the integrity of movement as a continuous process in space and time can be represented by an icon through a processual ``duplicate'' of this movement in the form, say, of a pantomime, which in this case functions as an integral icon (in the ontological sense).
However, movement can also be represented by an icon by another means: through the sum of discrete states of rest, as in cinematic icon. The integrity of an icon in this case is attained as a result of the peculiarity of visual perception known as the strobpscopic effect. The integrity of many icons---even the majority of them---arises, as we can see, only when the objective character of an icon is realised in the process of perception; consequently, integrity bears not an ontological but a gnosiological character.
The view is expressed that an icon can be both material and ideal. In our view, it is more expedient to categorise ideal icons under the term ``image''. It is evidently appropriate to characterise a sensory image (a sensation or perception) as an icon only when the image is viewed as a material signal. When an image is understood as an ideal reflection, to term it ``an icon" is to provide an opportunity for confusion.
_-_-_~^^1^^ This principle is not always observed in using the term ``icon''. Different forms of graphic icon, making it possible to translate almost any measured quantities---force, speed, tension, etc.---into a spatial scheme accessible to visual perception, are not icons in the true sense of the word, since the properties of objects and processes are not reproduced in them. Instead, information appears to us in the form of a peculiar ``spatial code''.
123Icons, being material in their ontological basis, can, generally speaking, encompass not only macroscopic-continuous objects, but also atomic-molecular, quantum-undulatory or discrete-impulse objects. However, man cannot directly and visually perceive objects and phenomena of this last kind and become aware in this way of their objective character. This means that they are not icons in the sense indicated above. Consequently, icons are always systems of a macroscopic-continuous character, although this does not exclude the presence in them, within the bounds of this continuity, of a discrete microstructure.
Thus, systems which can function as icons must necessarily possess the following ontological characteristics. They must be: 1. Material. 2. Macroscopic-continuous. 3. They must possess a certain resemblance to another object. 4. The degree of this resemblance may be expressed---for the majority of icons, at any rate---in the concept of similarity.
The gnosiological nature of an icon is manifested in the elucidation of such ontological signs as integrity and macrocontinuity, but it is displayed with particular clarity in an analysis of the functions of icons. Material systems possessing the ontological features noted above become icons only when they fulfill the gnosiological function of representation. The latter consists in man's becoming aware of the objective character of given systems in perceiving them and receiving visual, ``pictorial'' information about the original.
The function of representation is quite often equated with the sign function---with the property of ``being a sign"---particularly in semiotics. An icon here functions as a variant of the sign (iconic sign) with the special character of representation.^^1^^
The gnosiological functions of an icon as a representator or iconic sign is analysed in detail in semiotics. An iconic sign is never able to embody all the properties of a designated object with _-_-_
~^^1^^ Some writers consider the character of representation---whether based or not on the resemblance of a perceived system to an original---so important that they propose that the term ``icon'' be attached to representation based on resemblance and the term ``sign'' be attached to representation not based on resemblance. In this case an icon will not be a variant of the sign. Both these concepts can then be coordinated. But in relation to what? Evidently, a term denoting representation without its specific distinctions is needed. Charles Pierce once proposed the term ``representator'' for this purpose.
124 absolute identity; it always has a number of properties distinct from those of the denotatum.It is noted that in perceiving sign-vehicle of an iconic sign the material substratum of the sign is simultaneously perceived as a denotatum; that is, knowledge about a number of properties of an object is received indirectly and, at the same time, directly. Here the sign-vehicle functions as one of the denotatum, to which the iconic sign refers us.
An iconic sign may designate something by any method: characterisation, evaluation, ascription, etc. Poetic, mythological, scientific and other icons, which can fulfill the most varied individual and social functions (aesthetic, informative, etc.), differ correspondingly. An iconic sign's strong point lies in its ability to present what it designates for contemplation; its weak point lies in the limitation of the range of objects it can designate to those which are.similar to it.
An icon (or, more precisely, its substratum with the structure inherent to it) is material and sensually perceived. On the basis of this material structure a transmission of semantic information about the original takes place in the perception of an icon. In the given case semantic information bears an ideal and visual character or, what is the same thing, functions as an image. The image is, in fact, the ideal ``meaning'' of an icon, relatively general in its meaning, stable, normalised and, in its turn, conditioned by the peculiarity of the structure of the icon itself, which, by comparison with signs, is more normalised and, in principle, universal. An icon presupposes for its functioning normal human perception under the condition of personal acquaintance on the part of the perceiver with the original or of his acquaintance with the original through a description. It is required of the icon that the original be ``recognised'' in it and the number of degrees of freedom of the icon and, correspondingly, its integrity and normalisation are determined specifically by this necessary requirement. Additional limitations on the number of degrees of freedom are conditioned by practical functions of an icon (measurement, etc.), which are accessory in relation to representation.
An individual, personalised interpretation of the ``meaning'' of an icon will characterise it from the psychological aspect. In this case it is appropriate to speak not of the ``meaning'' but of the ``sense'' of an icon representation.
An icon also functions as a signal, which bears information (in the Shannon sense). Information is determined by the measure of complexity of the forms of an icon presented for perception. The greater the structural complexity of an icon, the greater the degree 125 of linkage between the elements and the higher the coefficient of their regularity, hence the greater the superfluousness of information or predictability, at least of a statistical character. Insofar as a statistical link in mathematics or the correlation between the past and the future are expressed with the aid of the function of auto-correlation, the quantity of information characterising any of the forms---which means the iconic form as well---is measured by the degree of interconnection or, more precisely, by the auto-correlation of the sequence of elements among themselves.
The quantity of information is minimal, given complete organisation of the icon, and corresponds to infinite predictability when the function of auto-correlation tends towards zero. As the form of a familiar icon is predictable, it increases the intelligibility and superfluousness of the given message and simultaneously reduces its originality. This is linked to the known advantages of icon as a signal of information. At the same time, experiments in the field of engineering psychology have made it clear that excessive predictability, attained by the principle of ``pictorialness'' of the signal, is transformed from a means of increasing the reliability of the transmission of information to man to a means of reducing it. The problem of the optimum coding of information with the aid of icons requires further research.
Representation is not, as a rule, the final goal or concluding function of an icon. It is, rather, a constitutive property of an icon, without which it could not exist as such. The final goals of representation may vary. When an icon serves the goals of cognition of an original (including artistic cognition), it functions as an iconic model.^^1^^
Among the icons used by man in cognitive and practical activity and, in particular, in art, a significant place is occupied by icons whose link with the original bears a causative character. Icons of this type---televisual, photographic and cinematic icons, _-_-_
^^1^^ At the present time there is an extensive literature dealing with models of this kind, which are most frequently termed ``image-bearing'' or ``iconic'' models. Since we are proceeding on the basis that every icon is material, we shall include among iconic models only material models, both substantial, three-dimensional and flat, graphic models. These models must stand in a relation of similarity to the original. The term ``image-bearing model" is evidently more appropriately retained for ideal models and model presentations.
126 drawings, traces, imprints, etc.---possess all the necessary ontological features of reflection, such as the presence of real interaction (direct or indirect) between material objects and the preservation of the structure of what is reflected in the structure of the reflector. The functioning of any object as an icon always presupposes gnosiological reflection as well. In the process of correlating icon and the original, distinguishing the content of reflection, etc. an ideal image of the original is formed. The establishment of a resemblance between icon and original and of the degree and character of this resemblance is mediated by the activity of man's consciousness. This relates in particular to all movements (and poses, as aspects of this movement) of a man made in conscious imitation or icon of any other objects, phenomena, people, etc., as well as to objective, substantial ``imprints'' of these iconic movements (drawings, sculptures, etc.).Elucidation of the nature and mechanism of the formation specifically of this type of an icon is of the greatest interest, since the basic gnosiological problems of the theory of icon are concentrated in this area in their most graphic form. A theoretical basis for elucidating the given question is provided by research into the machanism of sensory reflection and psychical regulation of motor acts.
How is the relationship of similarity between icons such as drawings or sculpture and the represented objects realised? As a result of the action of the object on the receptive and analytic functions of the analyser initial states of excitation arise in its receptive link which are transformed into a nervous code in the form of stimulatory impulses. The latter reach the central link of the analyser, whence signals are sent controlling the effector link, which carries out the ``iconic'' motor act. In all three links isomorphism between the content of the action of the object and the corresponding signals in the analyser is preserved. However, the signal-code in its general form (simple correspondence) does not ensure reproduction of the concrete individual properties of the represented object and, consequently, cannot ensure reproduction of a motor act similar in its spatial and cinematic ``outline'' to the object represented by an icon.
Contemporary data pioviued by theoretical informational research into the organisation of the effector and central links of the reflector system testify to the fact that neither the structure of channels of central connections, nor the structure of skeletal-- muscular effectors will in themselves fix a concrete programme of objective behavioural acts realised by them. The correct conclusion to emerge from this is that in mental regulation the form of 127 organisation of response reactions cannot be realised on the basis of the general code form of the signal and that the mental signal or sensory image usually ``works'' specifically a« an icon.
A mental icon ensures the fundamental possibility of preserving a causal similarity between the original and an iconic motor act (pantomime). This causal similarity is, naturally, also preserved in those imprints and traces of this iconic action which also constitute objective icons.^^1^^
From the gnosiological point of view the group of icons which we are reviewing is the representation of real sensuous objects mediated by psychological reflection. An icon is directly determined by psychological icons. The latter does not always function as a simple image of sensatiQn or perception which is directly determined by the object. Lenin had sensation and perception specifically in mind when he stressed that an icon necessarily and inevitably presupposes the objective reality of that which is represented. But apart from the sensuous being of an object, the activity of the subject's consciousness forms an important factor in the formation of a psychological icon or a mental, ideal model of an objective icon. Psychological correlates correspondingly transform images of sensation and perception, as a result of which psychological icons as ideal model of iconic action are created. All this can and not infrequently does lead to a situation in which similar transformation, in conjunction with the combination of different images and the complex analytical and synthetic activity of the consciousness, creates psychological icons which, taken as a whole, do not presuppose the objective reality of that concrete whole which is represented, although it is indubitable that the ``building material" for such images is also taken from the real world. Evidently, an objective icon of these images represents objectively existing objects indirectly, mediately, whereas it reproduces psychological icons directly. This, in particular, is the case with an icon of the fantastic images of the artistic consciousness.
__*_*_*__Inasmuch an icon is material and is ultimately always determined by an object, it is objective. Conversely, to the degree _-_-_
~^^1^^ The processes involved in the reproduction of tne qualities of objects in the motor link.are justly compared with the processes of determination in communications technplogy. However, reproduction of physical,, chemical and other modalities of objects can, in principle, be carried out only in objective icons, which are the result of psychological reflection and action.
128 that this determination is mediated by the subject's consciousness, the icon is subjective. Thus, icons of the type we are examining always function as unities of the subjective and the objective. The subjectivity of icons, as distinct from sensory images, in no wa$ means that the former reside in the consciousness of the subject and are inaccessible to external observation. Subjectivity here means that the icon reproduces not only the object, but also the subject. The subject is not represented by an icon but expressed in another specific form: it is coded or, more precisely, it is expressed in a transformed icon.Thus, in the icons under examination, the object is represented by an icon and expressed (coded), while the subject is only expressed. Of course, it can also be represented by an icon, but then it will have become an object of an icon.
Transformation certainly does not mean the obligatory distortion of form. It can be any deviation from the original or noncoincidence with it, whether committed intentionally or subconsciously. However, we do not take into account deformations which are the result of the action of ``organic'' reasons, including: 1) disruption of the normal activity of the consciousness;
2) physical inadequacies (pathology) on the part of the representor;
3) inability to objectivise, or to produce an icon.
The subjective aspect encompasses the relationship of the subject towards that which is represented by an icon (an aesthetic, ethical, utilitarian, etc. relationship). For example, the cognitive approach turns transformation of the icon in the direction of a more profound cognition of the object. The basic transforming operation here is that of abstraction. The utilitarian approach ``adapts'' the icon in the direction of the solution of practical problems (identification, measurement, etc.). The evaluative approach which manifests itself principally in art, is realised in an artistic representation by a variety of methods and means, through composition, foreshortening, montage, etc. A special aspect of the subjective side of an icon is the evaluative approach towards the icon itself and its substratum.
In all the cases examined above we have in view icons created without the aid of technical devices. However icons obtained with the aid of some kind of technical device are being disseminated increasingly widely. How is the subjective aspect reflected in icons of this kind?
In individual icons of this kind, the subject can express itself through the position (camera angle, foreshortening) from which the icon is made or by means of alterations in the technical device itself (changing the lense, focusing, etc.). All this ensures the __PRINTERS_P_129_COMMENT__ 5---121 129 opportunrty for transformation in the broad sense of the word. Imprints can also be subjected to treatment (for example, in artistic photography). With the combination of icons additional and extremely effective methods of ``subjectivisation'' of icon arise, which can be grouped together under the single term of ``montage''.
The problems of icon and abstraction and of icon and the ``general'' form the most important aspect of the study of an icon in the light of the theory of reflection. As has already been noted, every icon presupposes gnosiological reflection, the basis of which is constituted by the processes of abstraction both in the course of creating the icons and in the course of their perception. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that any icon, like any other sensuously perceived phenomenon, is always concrete. Nevertheless, it is said that an abstraction may be not only a concept, that is, the result of a process of mental abstraction, but also a sensuous, visual image (for example, a geometrical drawing, diagram or work of so-called abstract art). For this reason it seems to us necessary to state the following.
Any icon, being in itself concrete, materialises (in the process of creation) and evokes in the consciousness (in the process of perception) an image of the original. This image is always an abstract representation of the original, since it is always abstracted from something, something is singled out, etc. It is only in this sense, I consider, that reference can be made to the ``abstractness'' of an icon. In this sense every icon is abstract and only the degree of abstraction differs---from a stereoscopic cinema icon in colour to, say, an iconic diagram. In ordinary usage only icons of a very high order of abstraction are, as a rule, termed ``abstract''. Works of so-called abstract art generally contain no icons whatsoever in the exact sense of this term as accepted by us, since in them abstraction is taken to the point of complete divorce from the visible form of the work's subject.
In stating that an icon embodies an abstracted image of the original, we mean by an image not a concept but a visual image and, consequently, an image of an individual ooject. An icon is always individual and its denotatum (real or imagined) is always an individual thing. The question arises of whether it is possible to represent the general---^br example, not a certain house, but a house in general. In other words, is it possible to represent by an icon a concept? Can it be made visual?
In the strict sense of the word this is impossible. The general is, in principle, not visual; it cannot be represented by an icon. The general concept of ``a triangle" cannot be identified with the drawing of a triangle. But it is also true that there is no other visual 130 path to the general concept of a triangle than through the icons of separate triangles. However, for the philosopher who rejects the existence of the general and identifies it with a particular case, inasmuch as it represents other particular cases, it is a matter of indifference which case he selects. At the same time there are individual things which, without ceasing to be individual, are nevertheless closer to the general than others. In them the general is manifested more vividly. Individual things of this kind are termed ``characteristic'' or ``typical''; in perceiving them it is easier to render the general abstract. When an icon and, in particular, an artistic icon or a model is presented with the task of expressing the general, the icon, without losing its individuality, is organised in such a way as to elicit the general, essential and normal.
The specific character of generalising icons in art consists in their expression of the desire not to break away from all the fullness and richness of the concrete and individual or follow the course of rendering an icon abstract or schematic, but to ``provoke'' associative and generalising processes of thinking by means of searching out ``types'' or by isolating and emphasising the most characteristic aspects of a phenomenon.
Analysis of the devices and methods of building artistic icons and models, on the basis of which the processes of generalisation are carried out, is very important both from the theoretical point of view (on the level of the general theory of icon) and the practical point of view.
[131] __ALPHA_LVL2__ ARTISTIC MOTIVATIONV. Krutous
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.Motivation means the sum total of the motives and arguments used for substantiating something. The concept of ``artistic motivation" spread into literary criticism and aesthetics from the theory of drama. According to t'--e theory of drama we call those contextual elements which are relevant to the given event or action of the hero motivation and base them on the laws of artistic causality. In other words, the element and the whole must be coordinated in a certain manner. In the analogical sense this term is also applicable to other forms and genres of literature and the arts. Usually artistic motivation is determined as an explanation of events, of the stimuli and motives for the actions of the characters, of changes in these characters, and of stimuli figuratively revealed and confirmed. Motivation is the principal means of making a work of art sound truthful and convincing.
As a substantiation, motivation presupposes the presence of its ``addressee'', that is, the one it has to convince. Therefore, an analysis of this concept not only from the aspect of the creative process but also from that of the psychology of perception is completely justified. This article will draw attention to the correlation between motivation and aesthetic perception. I would like specifically to elucidate one principally important side of the question---the complicated, integrated character of the criteria of motivation. We usually connect motivation with the demand for plausibility and for the illusion of ``likeness to life''. However, all the complex content of the concept of ``motivation'' is not exhausted by this. One can talk about ``compositional motivation'', about the motivation of form by content, etc. That is, not only the 132 criterion of plausibility but also other aesthetic principles and laws appear as grounds for. justifying the introduction of an element into the artistic whole. Thus motivation takes on a broad, general aesthetic interpretation.
Various aspects of motivations (``real'', ``purely artistic" and others) comprise a single (but internally divided) whole. They are understood in the course of the perception of the whole and are tied in with the process of comprehension which is inherent to aesthetic perception itself.
Comprehension is always a semantic synthesis (which is impossible, of course, without analysis). This process is many-sided and is realised on different levels. In understanding a work of fiction, one can single out the following aspects, I think.
1. Comprehension as the very moment of transition from noncomprehension to comprehension.
2. Comprehension as an aspect of reconstituting imagination.
3. Comprehension as a correlation of the imagery of a work with the life experience of the one doing the perceiving (percipient).
4. Comprehension as a correlation of an element of the work with the aesthetic experience of the one doing the perceiving.
In its turn comprehension is inseparably linked with evaluation. And the success or failure of semantic synthesis and of the formation of an integral artistic image can themselves serve as a criterion for evaluating the perceived aesthetic object.
Artistic motivation is realised during the course of comprehension and the evaluation based on it and corresponds to their structure. The following aspects of motivation differ accordingly:
1. Motivation as the comprehensibility and intelligibility (on one level or another) of an element of the artistic whole, its ``assimilation'' through semantic synthesis.
2. Motivation as the inclusion of an element into the context of artistic causality.
3. Motivation as the coordination of an element of artistic causality with the life experience of the percipient, taking into account the supremacy of the artistic specificity of the whole.
4. Motivation as the conformity of an element of artistic structure with the strictly aesthetic norms and criteria of the percipient.
Of course, during genuine aesthetic perception it is difficult to differentiate between all these aspects since they are closely interconnected. Yet each one of them is specific.
The realisation of motivation is the result of analysis and synthesis and is accomplished first and foremost with the aid of the intellect. ``Discoursive'' thinking comes into play already during 133 the direct act of perceiving speech; true, in a ``superficial understanding" it appears in an ``abbreviated'' form. The role of thinking is even more significant on the higher levels of semantic synthesis. Thus the analysis of the perceptive aspect of artistic motivation not only assists the understanding of its specificity but also concretises our idea of the mechanism of aesthetic perception and its rational aspects in particular.
Let us consider the separate aspects of motivation and the mechanism of its realisation.
1) Motivated means explainable, comprehensible, meaningful. The first aspect of artistic motivation is based on just such an interpretation. It conforms .to the communicative nature of art. ``... The listener (reader) always naturally supposes that the communication passed on to him should by definition have some sort of meaning or, as we say now, carry some information. This has been shown by numerous tests. The attempt to understand the speaker by all means ... is inherent in the very nature of intercourse by means of language.... The very idea of intercourse is based on the receptivity of the listener who, by the nature of things, always strives to find, construe, and even reconstruct that which, in his opinion, should have been implicit in the intention of the speaker."^^1^^ Proceeding from the presumption of comprehensibility the percipient realises the elements as motivated by the ``semantic field" of the work.
For example, the action of a hero given ex abrupto can be nonmotivated. It can become fully understood during the course of further narrative or after a specific explanation. However we cannot ignore the fact that for a time it exists in the consciousness of the percipient as non-motivated, and as such it produces a certain effect.
We call non-motivated a deviation from the norms of usual object-conceptual logic in a work of art. At the same time the reader recognises that absence of motivation has its own motivation as well. And what is more, the reader demands that each such deviation be motivated from the point of view of the logic of artistic images. In accordance with this he ``switches over" the mechanism of his understanding. This is the general natural law of all forms of understanding.
The opinion of the Soviet psychologist S. L. Rubinstein on this question is characteristic. He notes that images of fantasy can contradict usual ``empirical'' logic. ``However, both in fairy tales _-_-_
^^1^^ A. I. Poltoratsky, ``Marked Phrases as a Stylistic Problem" in: The Development of Stylistic Systems of the Literary Languages of the Peoples of the USSR, Ashkhabad, 1968, pp. 326--27 (in Russian)
134 and the most fanciful of stories deviations from reality must be objectively motivated by the author's intentions and the idea embodied in the images. And the more significant these deviations from reality the more objectively must they be motivated."^^1^^The principle of ``switching over" from ``non-artistic'' to ``artistic'' levels of motivation is important for the perception of the literary text and serves as a unique artistic method used by the writer.
We call also the elements of obvious absurdity, particularly poetic ``abstrusiveness'', the dramatic ``absurd'', etc., nonmotivated. In realistic art the absurd can exist only in the capacity of temporary non-motivation which is subsequently ``dismissed'' by the semantic context (dream, delirium, insanity, etc.).
However, we must not forget that the evaluating of one or another element of a work as non-motivated can also be the result of the aesthetic ``underdevelopment'' of the percipient, when the ``key'' to deciphering the artistic image is unknown to him. It is not without reason that Goethe said that if someone complains about the incomprehensibility and vagueness of a work it still remains to be determined in whose head that obscurity is---in the author's or in the reader's. The perception of motivation will be aesthetically sound and objective only in the case where not only lower but higher levels of semantic synthesis take part in this process as well.
2) The perception of motivation as integral artistic causality is based on the perception of the elements of that causality included in the work. However, the author does not always directly show (on his own behalf or through a character) the causal relationship of the elements in the work. Usually he presents a broad scope for the reader's imagination.
The associative process constitutes the basis for the perception of motivations as the links of artistic causality. Few but essential ``supports'' are enough for a successful semantic synthesis.
The author who underestimates the creative activity of the percipient introduces a redundancy of motivational links in his work, thus hampering and impeding the associative process. It wasn't for naught that Anton Chekhov reproached Alexei Suvorin: ``Out of fear that you are not precise enough and that you will not be understood you find it necessary to motivate every situation and movement."^^2^^
_-_-_^^1^^ S. L. Rubinstein, The Fundamentals of General Psychology, Moscow, 1946, p. 330 (in Russian)
~^^2^^ A. P. Chekhov, Complete Collected Works and Letters in 14 Volumes, Vol. 14, Moscow, 1949, p. 233 (in Russian)
135The psychological mechanism of anticipation (prediction, preconception, expectation) is active in the perception of motivation. The realisation of motivation is accomplished in the contradictory process of the confirmation and non-confirmation of our expectations.
Anticipation in the perception of motivation can be described in terms of the theory of probability and the theory of information. The theory of information, in particular, singles out the antinomy of excess (predictability) and originality in artistic communication. A predominance of excess lessens the perceptive activity; a predominance of originality hinders the semantic synthesis, comprehension. Motivation is a synthesis of excess and originality.
The level of development of the analytic and synthesising activity of the percipient is important for the realisation of motivation, for ``until the last page is read ... the process of coordinating each separate detail of the work with its whole does not stop. That impression of the whole, or more accurately `presentiment' of the whole, which the author of a true work of art communicates in the very first lines of a poem, the first scene of a play, the first four bars of a symphony, etc., remains only a presentiment until it attains the level of genuine `vision', of `visible' interconnection".^^1^^
It must be emphasised that the unity of one or another element of artistic imagery, particularly the unity of the image in a literary work, which takes shape in the consciousness of the percipient during semantic synthesis, is not static, but is determined by the general dynamics of the work. The writer, by special artistic methods, cultivates in the reader an orientation on perceiving the character as an integral whole, and the reader no longer notices the separate non-motivations and non-conformities which are sometimes quite substantial.
Intellectual intuition and discoursive thinking interact in the realisation of motivative connections. Motivations are realised ``automatically'', intuitively, thanks to a usual terseness of expression. However, if during the process of perception a certain difficulty or ``semantic gap" appears then it is overcome with the aid of discoursive, detailed thinking.
Writers take the peculiarities of the reader's perception into account and often consciously create ``semantic gaps" or types of problematic situations, thus stirring the percipient's creative thinking. The literary ``technique of secrets'', typical not only of purely adventure or detective literature, is based on this.
_-_-_^^1^^ V. F. Asmus, ``Reading as Work and Creativity" in: V.F.Asmus, Questions of the Theory and History of Aesthetics, Moscow, 1968, p. 66 (in Russian)
136Great professional skill is needed for the writer to withhold as long as possible the realisation of motivation and at the same time gradually, imperceptibly introduce into the reader's consciousness all its elements necessary for future semantic synthesis. This is possible thanks to the fact that in each moment of perception one of the elements of motivation is in the centre of attention, the others, on the periphery. Important components of motivation can, up to a certain time, appear to the percipient to be insignificant details. Often a writer will divert the reader's attention by means of so-called ``false motivations''. A motivation prepared in this manner is particularly effective.
The entire mental apparatus of the percipient participates in his becoming aware of motivations. This finds its expression in toe creation of a special integral ihood in the percipient---co-experience (co-emotion). On the basis of the activity of the reader's reconstituting imagination a setting appears for perception of the imagined situation as supposedly real, and all the mechanisms of mentality acquire the proper tuning.
3) The process of comprehension has as its final result the inclusion of the newly cognised into the person's already acquired reserve of conceptions, ideas and thoughts. This is also true of aesthetic perception. Our experience, and this is particularly important, has a systematic character, and in this capacity it can be used as a criterion for evaluating events, actions, etc. from the point of view of their psychological probability and plausibility, in which objective immanence and indispensability of phenomena are reflected. When Aristotle insisted that a playwright speak about the possible according to probability or necessity he had in mind this very aspect of motivation. The ``concurrence'' of artistically motivated links in a work and the logics of our life experience gives the impression of cogency and motivation; their divergence is fixed as improbability or as insufficient motivation.
Undoubtedly the level of objectivity in the realisation of motivation as plausible depends upon the richness and profundity of the percipient's life experience, his social and personal goals and his world outlook.
Karl Marx applied the criterion of motivation in evaluating Eugene Sue's novelMysteres de Paris.He wrote, in particular: ``It is to be noted incidentally that Eugene Sue motivates the career of the Countess just as stupidly as that of most of his characters. An old nurse gives her the idea that she must become a 'crowned head'. Convinced of this, she undertakes journeys to capture a crown through marriage. Finally she commits the inconsistency of 137 considering a petty German `Serenissimus' as a 'crowned head'.''^^1^^ Marx emphasises the artificiality of such motivation.
The subjective moment exists along with the objective one in perceiving motivation. It was not by accident that Frederick Engels, in evaluating the description of Vienna in Minna Kautsky's novel The Old Ones and the New, made an essential stipulation: ``Whether the plot in this part of your work does not develop too hastily in spots may be left to your better judgement. Many things that to our kind of people appear to be rushed may look quite natural in Vienna considering the city's peculiar international character and its intermixture with Southern and East-European elements."^^2^^
Noting the sufficient or insufficient motivation of this or that train of the plot or step taken by the hero, the percipient takes into account the place the given motivations occupy in the structure of the work, their role in revealing the writer's intention and a number of other factors. Motivation intended only for a formal ``cohesion'' of the plot can be considered plausible even in its most abstract form. On the contrary, the central ``knots'' in the events revealing the ideas must be motivated thoroughly and in detail.
4) During perception the elements of a work also correlate with the aesthetic norms and demands of the percipient. Thus another aspect of motivation appears---the ``purely artistic''.
The conformity of each artistic detail to the semantics of the whole, to the idea of the work is one of the criteria of motivation in this sense. ``Each element in a work of art lives its own vivid life, being at the same time organically linked with the whole and embodying the idea of the work, which is a sort of motivation of all psychological motivations."^^3^^ In its turn each artistic detail motivates the general ``conception'' of the work, its idea.
The orientation towards the integrated perception of the genre, stylistic and other structures of the work which is formed in the recipient as a result of his former aesthetic experience is also an important criterion of motivation. Elements of a work which do not correspond to the given orientation are perceived as non-motivated, that is, outside of the organic links of the integrated structure, and essentially superficial. The uniqueness of a perceived work of art also has an influence on the realisation of motivation.
Some elements of the work may not correspond to the _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, Moscow, 1975, p. 67
~^^2^^K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1965, p. 390
~^^3^^V. Volkenstein, Dramatic Art, Moscow, 1969, pp. 264--65 (in Russian)
138 formulated stylistic norm and be non-motivated to the percipient, however they turn out to be motivated from the point of view of the new norm established by this innovative work.It is important to emphasise yet another essential point---the realisation of motivation is not limited to an act of direct aesthetic perception. Vissarion Belinsky, for example, distinguished two ``stages'' in perceiving literary works: ``the stage of rapture" and ``the stage of artistic pleasure''. In my opinion, it would be more accurate to speak of two differing types of perception. Aesthetic perception is always a direct contact with a work of art as an object for perception. But the first reading of a work differs substantially from the second, as the structure of the whole already exists in the consciousness of the percipient in the latter case. Asmus, in accentuating this principle, writes that, strictly speaking, the true ``first'' reading of a work is really the second.^^1^^ More than that, aeshetic perception can be included in the structure of a logical, evaluative analysis. Such perception may be termed ``deliberative''. We see in a developed aesthetic perception the synthesis of ``spontaneously emotional" and ``deliberative'' perceptions, and developed aesthetic perception can also include some elements of theoretical analysis.
Between these two ``stages'' lies the stage of the revision of immediate impressions, in which a logical analysis of motivations, fixed in the stage of immediate aesthetic perception, is carried out.
``Critical approach'', characteristic of immediate perception, is to an even greater extent inherent in the ``deliberation'' over a work. Everything in the structure of immediate. aesthetic perception is subordinated to the semantic synthesis, and if this synthesis if realised in its main outlines then individual nonmotivations remain on the periphery of consciousness. Now they are analysed by purely logical means, and new motivations and non-motivations are discovered in this process.
However, the comprehension of a work of art in the given stage is not reduced only to a reproducing in the memory and an analysis by logical means of impressions received during immediate aesthetic perception. A special ``deliberating'' over them can be absent. Memory is a complex mental process consisting of the consolidation, conservation, and subsequent reproduction of the information acquired through experience. The main processes of memory are remembering, reproducing, and forgetting. Even such _-_-_
^^1^^ V. F. Asmus, op. cit, p. 66 (in Russian)
139 an outwardly simple process of memory as forgetting is a conversion of that which was earlier perceived, a selection and retention of the essential, a generalisation, etc. The above also applies to the reproduction of the perceived in the form of remembering. This process also has an active character. Though the associative mechanisms of memory possess a certain `` inertness'', nevertheless a ``closing of the circuit" of newer and newer links among the elements of that perceived takes place at the end of immediate aesthetic perception. However, now our consciousness does not necessarily take those original ``knots'' as a basis for semantic synthesis. Here new motivations are revealed, and a rethinking of those realised earlier occurs.All these processes, in my view, can be united into the conception of the ``aesthetic after-effect" of a work of art. In its course the perceived is not only more profoundly comprehended but also more closely fused with our past experience, revising it. Analysis of artistic motivation in its perceptive aspect leads to the necessity of a deeper research into the mechanism of ``aesthetic after-effect''.
The following stage is that of the theoretical realisation of motivation, its systematic, functional analysis. The theoretical comprehension of artistic motivation is based on material obtained during the course of immediate aesthetic perception and ``aesthetic after-effect" and begins to be formulated already in the first stage of perception. ``We are not aware of the linguistic form itself when it conforms with the graphic content. However, this does not mean that it is not perceived, since language is a means of creating and revealing an image and its reality.
``If that harmony is destroyed, the linguistic form immediately becomes an object of conscious analytical perception. The places in the text that are particularly successful from the point of view of the reader's aesthetic demands are also realised."^^1^^ In ``aesthetic after-effect" the realisation of what elements of form arouse a stronger impression is at first lacking. There is only an ``emotion of form''. ``Such criteria are widespread on all levels of understanding, but principally on the lower level. On a higher level of understanding the artistic quality of a work is evaluated by means of indicating those elements of form which arouse aesthetic impression."^^2^^
_-_-_^^1^^ V. A. Artyomov, A. Series of Lectures in Psychology, Kharkov, 1958, pp. 155-- 56 (in Russian)
~^^2^^L. G. Zhabitskaya, Dissertation Theses ``Psychological Analysis of the Criteria for Evaluation of a Uterary Work by Senior Schoolchildren'', Moscow, 1966, p. 15 (in Russian)
140The concept of a work of art as a complicated structural whole where every element performs a definite function is the prerequisite for a systematic, functional approach. A comprehensive analysis of stylistic motivation, incidentally, cannot be carried out on the linguistic level alone. The justification for the introduction of a certain element of artistic speech is found by taking into consideration the composition and other aspects of a work of art. The systematic functional approach to motivation is a general aesthetic principle.
Art should be studied with due account for its various aspects and their dialectial interaction. Specifically, the gnosiological and communication approaches to aesthetic motivation should be combined. The communicative process in art includes the perceptive stage in the form of conscious perception and comprehension around which the artist must orient himself. To make art unintelligible is to distort its essence, which always has definite social and gnosiological causes.
The realisation of artistic motivation has its specific features depending on whether or not it is accomplished in the process of immediate aesthetic perception or during the process of ``aesthetic after-effect''. In the first case the possibility itself of carrying out a semantic synthesis which then becomes the criterion for motivation is in the foreground. In the second case the correlation of the perceived artistic image to our previous life and artistic experience in its complex is accentuated (motivation as artistic veracity----in the bounds of this or that measure of conventionality; the compositional, stylistic unity of the work).
Both these processes should be studied in more detail. However, it is evident that even when the orientation on representing reality in the forms of life itself is realised in a work, the impression of motivation is produced not by the direct parallelism between the elements of perception and the person's past experience, but as a result of the working of a complex psychological mechanism, dynamically generating an artistic effect. This process includes the following components: comprehensive association, proceeding on the conscious and unconscious levels with the participation of both aesthetic and extra-aesthetic experience; the phenomenon of anticipation; the emotional background, etc.
The realisation of artistic motivation is the result of the active analysis and synthesis performed by the subject. The mechanical and curtailed nature of this process does not exclude the possibility of the appearance of situations, soluble also by the aid of discoursive thinking interwoven with aesthetic perception. All this forces us to pay due attention to the rational side of 141 aesthetic perception, which should not be ignored as a specifics of art.
The formulation of the criterion of motivation is raised to a qualitatively new and higher level with the transition from immediate aesthetic perception and ``aesthetic after-effect" to an exclusively theoretical analysis, where the motivation of each element of the work is explored in the structure of the artistic whole and in its relation to aesthetic perception.
[142] __ALPHA_LVL1__ The Method
[143]
~
[144]
O. Makarov
__NOTE__ LVL that is here in original was moved two pages back. __NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.The linking of the art to ideology belongs to the set of problems the posing and interpretation of which particularly vividly reveal the innovative character of the Marxist approach to art.
As is known, the problem itself is not new. It has a long history commensurable with the history of aesthetic thought. Nevertheless Marxism could not be satisfied with a partial, though essential, modification in ideological material inherited from the past. The ideological demands of the growing proletarian revolutionary movement brought about a radical revision of the fundamentals of aesthetic knowledge. Such a revision was carried out in the process of the formation of an integrated scientific world outlook in the working class which included the dissemination of the principle of materialistic monism on the study and explanation of aesthetic and artistic phenomena.
The scientific posing of the problem of linking the art to ideology in the general sociological sense and the defining of the principles of its investigation concur chronologically and in essence with the emergence of materialist studies on social being and social consciousness.
The scientific explanation of art was not only a result or consequence of the materialistic conception of history but also an internal, necessary feature of this great discovery. Research into the process of the formation of integrated Marxist studies shows that the categories of social consciousness developed by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and the solving by them of the more general historical and materialist problem of the correlation of social being and social consciousness presupposed and included a philosophical analysis of art and its essence. The principal significance of that 145 analysis lies in the irrefutable proof of the reflection of people's social being in their consciousness in reference to the profoundly specific form of spiritual creativity, filled with individual, unique features, the study of which has long since gained the reputation of being one of the most complex theoretical problems.
Marxism proceeds from the fact that it is impossible to explain art profoundly as such or to show how it differs from other social phenomena without ascertaining what unites it with them.
Historical materialism focuses first and foremost on the systems qualities of social consciousness.-seeing them as the basis of the study of the individual forms of social consciousness. In his letter to W. Borgius (1894) F.\thinspaceEngels emphasised: ``Political, legal, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic basis. One must think that the economic situation is cause, and solely active, whereas everything else is only passive effect. On the contrary, interaction takes place on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself."^^1^^ Thus the influence of each of the forms of social consciousness listed by F. Engels on the economic foundation and on the course of social development is realised no differently than by its interaction with all other superstructural formations. This conclusion should serve as a reference point in specifying the subject spheres, in defining the border problems of concrete sociological disciplines, and in the studies by representatives of the given disciplines of the influence of morals, science, the arts, etc. accordingly on the social behaviour of individuals and social groups.
Conclusions which are of a fundamental methodological significance follow from the historical and materialist analysis of the given problem. One of them is that it is impossible to determine once and for all the place and role of art in ideological practice irrespective of the concrete historical circumstances of social and cultural development. They depend on the character of the ideological struggle between the classes; on the composition of the opposing ideologies with which art, formed on the grounds of existing reality or inherited from the past, is associated on the stage of development and type of intercommunication of the other phenomena forming these ideologies, and also on a number of other factors. Behind all these ``variables'' are hidden clashing interests and the aspirations and needs of social groups, which directly or indirectly influence art and the perception of its works. _-_-_
^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1975, p. 441--42
146 Thus, as far as possible, a comprehensive calculation of the above factors, taken in their aggregate, is a sine qua non for the determination of the ideological function of literature and art.Another conclusion can be formed in the following manner: the content of the question of the interaction of art with ideology cannot be exhausted by its sociological interpretation; it also requires aesthetic study and art criticism based on the achievements of Marxist thought. The characteristics of art as an ideological phenomenon presupposes, consequently, a corresponding analysis of its constantly developing graphic language and the phenomenon of artistry connected with it.
The ideological conceptions of people express the interests of these or those social classes and by virtue of this have a definite social and practical tendency. Does it not follow from this that unlike science, any ideology distorts the true state of things? The founders of Marxism, as is known, repeatedly characterised ideology as a false awareness, however in this they always had in mind only those ideological views (more often than not philosophico-idealistic or religious) which falsify reality. The ideologist who develops or systematises such views doesn't realise the true prerequisites and motivations of his own activity. He works exclusively with thought material, wrote Engels, ``which he accepts without examination as something produced by reasoning, and does not investigate further for a more remote source independent of reason".^^1^^ In discovering this source in the real, and not imagined, world of human relations the founders of Marxism explained the essence of ideology and along with this the secret of ideological illusions. The scientific criticism of such illusions developed by them in many works was a judgement not of ideology as such, but rather of anti-scientific (religious) and non-scientific ideological systems. It is known that Marx and Engels preferred not to apply the term ``ideology'' to their own teaching. By this they emphasised the qualitative uniqueness of scientific communist ideology, because there was not and is not any doubt that its creators were proletarian ideologists. They were never theorists of the ``end of ideology" as they are often characterised in the West. The study of social consciousness developed by Marx and Engels excluded the absolutising of the traditional antagonism between science and ideology, and Marxism on the whole serves as an example of the inner unity and mutual permeation of scientific and ideological content.
_-_-_~^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 434
147Depending on the circumstances of time and cultural traditions the role of art in social movements can be different, including most important (let us recall, for example, Renaissance fine arts or Russian classical literature of the 19th century). But in any case art discredits the ruling ideology only in the capacity of another, opposing ideology already formed or in the process of being established.
In revising the usual perception of the world and in opening up new cognitive horizons progressive art thus undermines the influence of reactionary or conservative ideology because it becomes a form of the self-awareness of the social forces which are consolidating themselves on the proscenium of history. Such is the dialectics of social consciousness taken in its historical development. By ignoring the fact that art is ideologically conditioned it is impossible to understand and explain either the objective contradictions of the artistic process or the sources of the subjective inspirations of its creators.
Sometimes the evaluative character of ideological activity is emphasised and pushed to the foreground, moreover the latter action, from this point of view, represents not reality but namely the attitude to reality formed in the consciousness of this or that social group and reflecting its conception of the existing and what is due to exist. This view of ideology has much in common with its interpretation given above as a form of false awareness. In particular, it is also connected with the contraposition of ideology to science, however such a contraposition is already effected by another indication: if in the first case ideology is correlated with science as false awareness with true awareness, then in the present case they are correlated as an evaluative attitude to social reality and its study.
There is also a definite difference between the theoretical study of ideological problems, on the one hand, and the practical assimilation of ideology, on the other. In capturing mass consciousness, ideology acquires in it a vividly expressed subjective and emotional colouring, appearing in the form of personal ideals, aspirations, motives of social behaviour, a diverse set of practical stimuli, etc. In absolutising this distinction, the supporters of the point of view under consideration exclude altogether theoretical activity from the structure of ideological activity.
Ideological judgements are unquestionably evaluative. But does not the cognition of social life presuppose a definite evaluation of its phenomena? ``... It is impossible 'to study the real state of affairs','' emphasised Lenin, ``without qualifying it, without appraisingit from the Marxist, or the liberal, or the reactionary, etc., 148 point of view!"^^1^^ In their turn evaluative ideological judgements in one way or another reflect reality and are based on a certain knowledge of it. This means that they include at least an element of objective content. If any ideology is seen as an attitude not connected with the reflection of such conditions, then its objective content is denied or placed in doubt. This then makes lip the prerequisite for principally excluding scientific study from the sphere of ideological production.
Scientific ideology is a system of those ideological views and ideas that correspond to objective truth. This principle was formulated and discovered by Lenin in his fundamental philosophical work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.
The level of development and the maturity of this or that ideology are usually judged on the basis of the systematisation of its theory---economic, political, legal, philosophical, etc. This is not surprising. Social theory is the highest, most consistent form of the expression of the corresponding interests of a class or an entire society. But this in no way means that its ideological function in the socialist or communist social movement is carried out only by the theory of social life. Lenin, in his article ``Party Organisation and Party Literature" put forward and substantiated the idea of the adherence to party principles of literature and art, applying the most important ideological characteristics to the phenomena of artistic creativity. These innovative theses, which enriched Marxism, are interrelated and supplement one another.
It is not ideological forms differing from it, including art forms, that the idea of scientific ideology opposes, but rather nonscientific or anti-scientific (religious) ideologies. It characterises the bases of world outlook of both the theoretical and the artistic mastering of reality from social positions. Convinced that proletarian ideology can and must ``present an integral picture of our realities'', satisfy ``the requirements of science'',^^2^^ Lenin meant, in the final analysis, the whole system of phenomena out of which it is formed. As is known, he developed the idea of the interconditionality of the cognitive and ideological functions of social consciousness, objectivity and proletarian adherence to party principles on the material of not only scientific theory but also art (in ``Party Organisation and Party Literature'', in his articles on Lev Tolstoy and in a number of other works).
What characterises art as an ideological phenomenon?
_-_-_^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 123
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 296--97
149Firstly, the reflection in it of existing or past social reality (moreover the involvement of art in the conflicts and circumstances of the past includes artistic interpretation of the historical material in reference to the actual problems of the present and the dawning future). Secondly, the artistic evaluation of reality in respect to a definite aesthetic ideal in which class or national interests and aspirations are interpreted. ``In its basis art is the struggle for or against,'' wrote M.~Gorky. ``There is not nor can there be any indifferent art because man is not a camera, he doesn't `fix' reality but either affirms or changes, destroys it.''^^1^^ And, finally, the orientation of the reader, viewer or listener around this or that form of perception of the world and civic conduct, and the educating of him as a subject of social activity. In the unity of these three factors the latter serves as fundamental proof of the ideological nature and ideological activity of art.
The scientifically based character of art as an ideological phenomenon is disseminated in a class society on all artistic creativity, on all it produces. There are sufficient grounds for such a conclusion, especially today. In connection with the growing politicisation of artistic culture the definitions ``political cinematography'', ``political film'', ``political theatre'', etc., became widespread in the art criticism of the 1960's. Inasmuch as the representation of political events is not a necessary and, all the more so, main condition of the political significance of a work of art, the need for clarifying the meaning of those definitions arose very quickly. Along with other considerations the idea of the need for distinguishing ``political'' art and ``ideological'' art was expressed in foreign art research and criticism. All these terminological and conceptual innovations, in my view, cannot be considered successful. They create the impression that only some of the contemporary artistic phenomena involve political life and the ideological struggle, while the others have no relation whatsoever either to politics or to ideology.
Of course it does not follow from this that it is necessary in general to repudiate the differentiation of artistic phenomena by their ideological efficacies. The more fully social reality is represented by means of and in the material of the given form of artistic creativity and the more general it is, the higher in principle is its ideological and aesthetic efficacy. In this respect the leading forms of socialist realist art today are the belles-lettres and cinema. Along with this such a combination of the various forms of socialist _-_-_
^^1^^ M. Gorky, Collected Works in 30 Volumes, Vol. 27, 1953, pp. 444--45
150 art is conventional and relative. Supplementing each other in the embodiment of the humanist ideal and in the expression of the various facets and shades of the new man's attitude to the world, they constitute an integrated system and' influence social consciousness in the aggregate and not separately.Thanks to this, the forming of communist convictions in man is in a particularly close and many-faceted contact with the growth of his emotional culture.
In cultivating the universal spiritual capabilities of imagination, taste, aesthetic perception and others in man, the artists in a class society are fulfilling thus their mission through the forms of ideologically conditioned creativity. In principle, the richer the universally human content of the ideological concepts and values guiding (or essentially influencing) people who create or perceive works of art, the more successfully art awakens and cultivates these abilities. For evaluating this or that system of ideological views the essential thing is which possibilities they open up for the spiritual mastering of concrete historical reality, and particularly its progressive tendencies. In this respect the enrichment by the leading masters of socialist realism of the spectrum of the artistic portrayals of man, seemingly already ``exhausted'' by world art, with new characters, conflicts, and typical situations serves as practical corroboration of the heuristic values of the ideological convictions of these artists.
It can be said that consistent progress towards the fundamental goal of art---spiritual development, enrichment of the personality---is possible in the modern era only through a truly democratic socialist upbringing. The prerequisites for this should be seen in the qualitative singularities of socialist ideology, both taken as a whole and in those features of the latter which characterise it as scientific ideology. Socialist ideology is a universal one; it expresses the interests of the international working class and at the same time (and thanks to this) the interests of all mankind and the requirements of its historical development. Therefore an orientation around the fundamental interests of this progressive class as the basis of aesthetic evaluation reproducing social reality in art is a choice benefitting the most adequate, truthful (though necessarily historically conditioned) and artistic reflection of it.
Socialist realism as an artistic method was developed in indissoluble- affinity with the dissemination of Marxism-Leninism and the consolidation ol scientific ideology in the mass consciousness. The basic principle of this method was and remains the principle of artistic truth. The idea of instilling ``beneficial'' 151 illusions into the reader or viewer is completely alien to the masters of socialist art. Like Marxist scholars, they share the conviction that ``we must not create illusions or myths for ourselves; this would be entirely incompatible with the materialist conception of history and the class point of view".^^1^^
In his awareness of his responsibility to society and art, the modern artist particularly strongly feels the inevitable insufficiency of his individual experience in life. The development and spreading of scientific ideology more than anything coincides with his inner need forgathering his own impressions and thoughts about life into an integrated aesthetic conception. For in the experience of the revolutionary reconstruction of the social relations reflected by this ideology the essence of modern man and the direction of the growth of his awareness and self-awareness is particularly fully manifested.
Does it follow from the above that the ideological self-education of the artist and his mastering of the conclusions of Marxist thought only anticipate artistic practice or just correct it? No. They are inseparable from such practice which is a most important sphere of the artist's activity in life. Namely a direct and vital involvement in national life and a passionate interest in concrete human relations, destinies and characters more than anything motivate the artist's turning to those teachings which explain the sophisticated interactions of phenomena. In its turn, Marxist-Leninist theory arms the artist with a knowledge of the laws and perspectives of social development and orientates him around an intent ``scrutinising'' of life and around its purposeful creative research by the specific means of art. Therefore it is understandable that its influence on the writer or cinematographer by no means reduces in principle his impressionability and emotional ``responsiveness''. On the contrary, by intensifying and improving the artist's attitude to reality it promotes a development of the powers, versatility and flexibility of emotional reactions of the creative subject. In other words, such an emotional culture of art's creators, so important to aft, is bound in the closest possible way to their world outlook and dependent upon it.
Everything for which an artist is indebted to socialist achievements in the field of spiritual culture he assimilates by himself, mainly in the course of his own creative life. If, in principle, the assimilation of a socialist world outlook serves as a general condition for the productivity and fruitfulness of the creativity of artists, then, actually, such an assimilation appears as _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 450
152 an inimitable individual process and a result of the searchings and discoveries of each of the masters of socialist realism. World outlook, which defines the purposefulness of an artist's talent and aesthetic convictions, is not only a premise for his artistic achievements. They form and develop by themselves in the process of individual artistic cognition and changing reality. Artistic assimilation of concrete historical phenomena through socialist practice in the light of Marxist-Leninist studies is at the same time an assimilation of those studies as a world outlook, thanks to which a talented artist finds freedom of expression and the inner right to creative searchings which allow him to make a unique investigation into phenomena which go far beyond the bounds of individual life experience.As Soviet literary criticism has convincingly shown, the forming of aesthetic views in, for example, Mikhail Sholokhov and Alexander Fadeyev is tied in with their artistic research of the events of the Civil War, and in Alexander Tvardovsky- with an understanding of the processes of the socialist transformation of the village. The further development of the individual aesthetic conception of these artists is also inseparable from the most significant stages in the life of our country and its people. This natural tendency expresses the specific (by no means mechanical) conformity between the development of socialist realist art and the putting of Marxist-Leninist ideology into practice.
Scientific ideology develops an immunity against sectarianism in questions of spiritual culture and against a nihilist attitude to the art of the past. It is important that the artist of the new world feel and realise himself to be a full-fledged heir to all the genuine values of world art. The progressive tendency of this art is not reduced to the significance of the richest school of artistic mastery for him. Its assimilation, realised in many-faceted, individual selective forms, turnsthat truth, the truth that communism, which is in the process of being created today in our country, has been prepared by the entire development of mankind, into the aesthetic conviction of the writer, painter and musician. Thanks to this, socialist reality is realised and recreated by the masters of socialist realism as a process of the practical solving of the problems of the individual and society, put forward or outlined by the greatest humanist artists of the past.
Socialist ideology, being scientific, is an open and, in this sense, incomplete system presupposing the constant development and clarification of its founding principles and attitudes (in particular, through art). Its characteristic ideal of the improvement of human powers and abilities which know no bounds overcomes the former 153 prevailing finalist notions of social and cultural evolution. In the matter of elucidating such an ideal the role of realistic artistic thinking is particularly great and truly indispensable.
The productivity of the union of Marxist science and realistic creativity is not exhausted by the successes of the artistic mastering of Marxism, which determines the innovative feature of socialist art. It also finds its expression in the fact that this art, in its turn, stimulates and supplements social theory by its own discoveries. Unlike the theorists, who need sufficient statistical data for their generalisations, artists do not reduce the individual to the social. They observe social tendencies in the individual images of life recreated by them and frequently draw attention for the first time to the sprouts of the new in social being and consciousness. The ability of realistic art successfully to ``compete'' with theoretical thought in discovering only yet outlined and developing phenomena (of course without supplanting it and giving it valuable material for analysis) is its unquestionable merit. ``The artist is valuable,'' noted Anatoly Lunacharsky, ``when he turns up virgin soil, when he intuitively breaks into a sphere which logic and statistics would find hard to penetrate."^^1^^
In this way artistic creativity is not only ideologically determined ``from without'', from the aspect of practical and theoretical awareness, but it itself, by its own means, also forms specific ideological values, involving itself thereby in the general process of the development and consolidation of socialist ideology.
_-_-_~^^1^^ A. V. Lunacharsky, ``Theses on the Problems of Marxist Criticism" in: On Literature and Art, Moscow, 1965, p. 18
[154] __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE BIRTH OF A NEW ARTN. Leizerov
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.The artistie development of mankind is an uneven process. While it does not always climb upwards in a straight line it nevertheless knows no stoppages along the way. The indicators of artistic progress are immortal, inimitable works of art which are uncovered again and again. It is they which revive in images the combined feelings and thoughts of eras long since consigned to the past; it is they which excite successive generations with the unquenchable ardour of passions, with searches for the meaning of life, and with the expression ol the beautiful in nature and man.
Behind the diversity of the graphic generalisation of, reality, which arouses people's aesthetic feelings in response, can be seen quite definite common typological features. However it is equally incontestable that these tendencies, both in the creativity of a single writer and in an entire artistic trend, almost never appear in a ``pure'' form. ``Type of creativity,'' wrote Academician M.B. Khrapchcnko apropos ol the problem in question, ``includes a definite aesthetic potential and the prerequisites for general conclusions of a specific nature. But in addition it is evident that only by merging with voluminous graphic generalisations and the universally meaningful aesthetic values created in its sphere does the type ol creativity define artistic progress."^^1^^
The conclusions reached by that well-known researcher affirm oner again that without due regard for the aesthetic principles inherent in any artistic method both in its general and exclusively individual interpretations outlining the range of life material and the character of its graphic interpretation, the typology sought for _-_-_
~^^1^^M. B. Khrapchenko, The Creative Individuality of the Writer and the Development of Literature, M., 1972 p. 128 (in Russian)
155 in the present case would be inconceivable. Moreover from the Marxist point of view any typology in the field of art will become metaphysical and hang in the air if deprived of a specific historical grounding. ``Ancient Greece had its own classical art, the Middle Ages had their own art, the bourgeiosic has its own art,'' said Academician Todor Pavlov, the well-known Bulgarian philosopher. ``Socialist and communist society must also have its own art, its own basic or main trend in art."^^1^^After analysing the range of typical indications permitting the understanding of the essence of this or that creative method, it is quite possible to pick out the aesthetic principles most typical of it.
Thus the critical realism of the 19th century was historically determined, on the one hand, by the vigorous development of capitalism and the crisis of serfdom (the latter referring to Russia) which bluntly exposed the social contradictions and defects of both the completely decaying social formation and those of the one established in struggle with it and, on the other hand, by rich literary traditions, primarily those correlated with a realistic type of artistic creativity. The urge of progressive artists truthfully to unmask the essential aspects of reality unacceptable to them inevitably led to a forming of such aesthetic principles in which bold realism was inseparable from critical inspiration.
However the purport of the artist's world outlook appears as a motivating aesthetic principle leading to the desired result only when it is combined with the individuality of the author. This truth was very distinctly formulated by the author of La Comedie humaine. While setting himself the goal of depicting the ``social sickness" of his times and of showing the world as it was, Balzac, however, wrote that ``the truth of nature can not be and will never be the truth of art".^^2^^ There is no contradiction in this affirmation. On the contrary, here a single initial position leading to the forming of a common aesthetic principle for critical realists is outlined. ``The genius of the artist,'' writes Balzac in concluding the opinion given above, ``consists in his ability to choose natural circumstances and turn them into elements of literary truth."^^3^^ In other words, the task lies in recasting the truth of life into the artistic truth most equivalent to it for portraying the world as it is. For, as _-_-_
^^1^^ ``Socialist Realism and Contemporaneity" (Academician Todor Pavlov's discussions with Bulgarian literary scholar, Candidate of Philological Sciences Alexander Atanasov). Foreign Literature and Contemporaneity, Issue 2, M, 1973. p. 37 (in Russian)
^^2^^ Oeuvres Completes de Honors de Balzac. Oeuvres Diverses, III (1836--1848), Paris, 1910, p. 320
^^3^^ Ibid.
156 the writer insisted, ``the secret of universal and eternal success is in truth."^^1^^Critical realism's paramount service was in its posing of the most basic social and ethical problems of its time and their artistic study. Quite typical in this respect are the titles of many wellknown works by Russian critical realists which can be considered as fixing the ideological and artistic intention of the writers. Some of them directly reflected the class antagonisms and contradictions corroding society: The Insulted and the Humiliated, Wolves and Sheep, Poor People, Messieurs et Mesdames Pompadours. Some of these titles laconically outlined universal human conflicts---Wit Works Woe, Fathers and Sons, Crime and Punishment---while others posed vital questions---Who Lives Well in Rusl, Who is to Blame?, What is to be Done?
However by extracting characters and conflicts from life and exposing the links of cause and effect which conditioned imaginary and genuinely historical events, and even the actions and emotions of characters, critical realism could not extract from life itself a positive programme for its real transformation. ``While exposing the vices of society and portraying the 'life and adventures' of the individual in the grips of family traditions, religious dogmas, and legal rules,'' wrote Maxim Gorky, ``critical realism could not show the way out of captivity"~^^2^^ Only the realism of a new type---socialist realism---could answer the questions ``Who is to Blame?" and ``What is to be Done?" while remaining on the firm ground of life and history. The consistently pursued principle of communist partisanship became its primary typological feature.
In the works of Maxim Gorky, the father of socialist realism, life was seen for the first time through the eyes of the class to which the future belonged---the working class. In his works written from the position of scientific socialism the people began to be portrayed already not so much as a spontaneous force but rather as the conscious maker of history. The new heroes, the workers, shown to the world by Maxim Gorky, were not like their predecessors in classical literature; for example, not like the unfortunate toilers deserving of compassion in Dickens, the loners, enlightenersutopians in Georges Sand, or the people blinded by hate and beaten by life in Zola or in Kuprin's novel Moloch. In paving the way for the literature of the future Gorky showed how new people _-_-_
~^^1^^ Oeuvres Completes de Honore de Balzac. Oeuvres Diverses, III (1836--1848), Paris, 1910, p. 320
^^2^^ M. Gorky, Collected Works in 30 Volumes Vol. 27, p. 217 (in Russian)
157 who knew how to rebuild the world were moulded in the fire of revolutionary struggle.In Lenin's work ``Party Organisation and Party Literature" the leading principles of world outlook and .the aesthetics of the new creative method still in the making were prophetically formulated. Its fundamental axiom was an adherence to communist party principles as the highest manifestation of national character in art.
Adherence to party principles is, undoubtedly, first and foremost a world outlook. Its ideological and aesthetic expression in art is the result of the artist's class-party approach to perceiving and representing life in his creative searchings. It is namely this quality, having become an inner necessity as a result of the artist's convictions, that links adherence to communist party principles with the expressing of a definite social ideal and with artistic specifics and makes it not simply a principle of world outlook but also an actual aesthetic principle. In its development this principle inevitably shapes socialist realism as the creative method coinciding most with the objective course and demands of modern society.
Such type of vision and graphic transformation of life, enriched and given a singleness of purpose by a Marxist-Leninist world outlook, is by no means an alien instruction imposed upon artistic creativity, which our ideological adversaries never tire of reiterating, but rather a basic feature of art as a historically determined form of social consciousness.
Convincing proof of this is, for example, the fact that the theoretical understanding and practical application of this leading principle of socialist realism came about in our country in the 1920s from a position of, it would seem, the most varied artistic creative platforms. However there were no divergences over the main point among the critics and art figures who staunchly stood for Soviet power. This main point, on the basis of which socialist realism was theoretically interpreted and formed in art, consisted, to begin with, in the understanding of creative method as a relation of art to reality corresponding to a communist world outlook.
Here are some convincing examples of this. The poet V. Mayakovsky believed that the Society of the Left Front---one of the ``extremely revolutionary trends in art"---should be based on the principles laid down in his proposal to the propaganda department of the CC RCP(B). This proposal determined the primary tasks of the magazine LEF (the first issue was published in March, 1923). Three points stood out in it: = ``a) to promote the finding of a communist path for all genres of art; = b) to revise the ideology and practice of so-called leftist art by discarding individualistic 158 affectations and developing its valuable communist features.... = c) to fight against decadence, against aesthetic mysticism, against selfsufficing formalism, and against indifferent naturalism for the affirmation of tendentious realism based on the utilisation of the technical devices of all revolutionary schools in art".^^1^^
The aims upheld by Alexander Fadeyev in those same 1920's had much in common with the central theses of Mayakovsky's programme. In the RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) magazine The Literary Guardian Fadeyev, speaking about the new art, stated: ``...any artistic method is, first and foremost, the artist's attitude to reality''. According to the writer's views at the beginning of the 1930's, the creative method is realised in an ideological, artistic and stylistic unity. The style in the field of art which will be created by the proletariat, wrote Fadeyev, is a style ``corresponding to the new class content, to the new proletarian world outlook. However that style does not develop by itself, it has to arise on the basis of the assimilation and thorough revision of the old cultural heritage".^^2^^
It is noteworthy that even Voronsky, the leader of the literary group ``Pereval'' (Crossing) with whom both the LEF and RAPP representatives passionately polemicised, expressed similar thoughts. In his highly controversial book The Art of Seeing the World the critic all the same saw the ``main question, the question of all questions" lying ``in the artists' attitudes to the world'', and called for perception of ``living life" adequate to the new reality.^^3^^
The RAPP members, in insisting that the proletarian artist become a true materialist-dialectician and consequently learn to show the natural laws of reality through ``concrete demonstration and the portrayal of life itself'', at times relegated aesthetic criteria proper to second place and mainly accentuated the role of a class world outlook in their narrow understanding of the creative method as affirmed by them. Greater attention to the artistic specifics of art was paid by the theoreticians of ``Pereval'' and by the writers whose works were published in Krasnaya Noy magazine: Malishkin, Bagritsky, Katayev and others. While obviously exaggerating the role of unconscious intuitive elements in artistic creativity, the members of ``Pereval'', however, could not conceive of a graphic generalisation of ``direct impressions" except from the positions of a communist world outlook. They saw _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. Mayakovsky, ``To the Propaganda Department of the CC RCP'', Literary Critic No. 4, 1936, pp. 128--29
~^^2^^A. Fadeyev, ``Diary'' in: The Literary Guardian No. 20, 1929, pp. 6-7
~^^3^^ A. Voronsky, The Art of Seeing the World, M., 1928, pp. 104--05
159 the graphic nature of art as a specific form of the vision and cognition of life. In this direction they made a definite contribution to the theoretical elaboration of the aesthetic principles of the new method. One has to admit that like the theory of the depiction of life in progress expounded by the LEF members, the accurate description of facts, having been freed of superfluous rationalism and the extremes of polemic fervour, made a certain contribution to the theory of socialist realism, which was called upon to facilitate the reorganisation of the world on socialist principles by word and deed.All this is quite essential in order to understand how socialist realism was formed and theoretically interpreted. However this process, and on no account should this be forgotten, must not be conceived in the form of a mechanical combination of separate conceptions and creative achievements which came from within groups isolated from one another. All this was considerably more complicated and was in lively interaction and motion.
But nevertheless, behind the complexity and contradictions of this process a general platform that created the real possibility, encouraged by the Communist Party, of uniting the creative intelligentsia of the Soviet Union and which inevitably led to the theoretical comprehension of the new artistic method was visible.
The representatives of LEF, ``Pereval'' and other groups named and not named here who were the most talented and the most devoted to the revolution, because they were united in their view of art's relation to reality, created by various means marvellous works which entered the treasure-house of Soviet art. And by these means, which were the basic subject of bitter discussions, these representatives formulated a qualitatively new class-party approach to the specifics of the graphic understanding and the contradictions of the material of life. The ideological and aesthetic principle of partisanship as time revealed, did not demarcate, but rather promoted already on the basis of a general creative method, the consolidation and further fundamental development of all that actually laid the foundations for a more vivid expression of the stylistic streams of socialist realism.
In determining the trend of the ideological content of art, this leading aesthetic principle of socialist realism integrated all other creative principles inherent to this new innovatory method. Is it really possible to disengage oneself from an adherence to party principles and then speak about the national character, internationalism, revolutionary humanism and specific historical approach of Leonid Leonov's Russian Forest, Alexander Tvardovsky's Vassily Tyorkin, or the poetry of Nikolai Aseyev, 160 Mikhail Svetlov, Leonid Martynov and others? The diversity of artistic forms and styles typical of the individual creative manner of these and other authors turned out to be feasible precisely within that aesthetic community of the graphic creative process that socialist realism represents. For in each given work a concise class-party approach to the reality reproduced and evaluated by the artist, an approach expressed by the most varied means, is revealed first and foremost.
All this inevitably led to the ideological consolidation of masters so dissimilar in their individualities and created real grounds for the establishment of a unified artistic method.
The influence of the basic ideological and aesthetic principle of partisanship hi art examined here spread directly to those features which related to the characteristic traits of the artistic trend as a whole. Here belong the choice of subjects and characters and the general interpretation of the interdependence of circumstances which give rise to a definite type of character and behaviour of the human personality, and at the same time^he depicting of characters not simply as products of history but also as individuals who in their turn create specific circumstances and make history. The typological traits noted above naturally unite into a single artistic trend such works heterogeneous in their stylistic and genre features as Serafimovich's The Iron Flood, Ivanov's Partisan Tales and Yanovsky's The Riders, which obviously gravitate towards generalised symbolic, romanticised artistic forms, as well as epic novels purely realistic in their manner of typification and in their introducing of an abundance of details of everyday life: M, Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don, Alexei Tolstoy's Ordeal. and others. Examples of the same kind can be quoted by referring to poetry and drama and, what is more, by comparing works by the same author as, for example, The Fall of Dair and Provincial People by Malishkin.
If we move closer to the present time and touch upon, for example, how the Great Patriotic War is being depicted in the works of prose-writers who have appeared in literature only during the past decades, then here, too, we can clearly distinguish within a unified- aesthetic platform artistic specifics which are always individual.
The adherence to communist party principles is correlated to the principle of national character, which was always present in the progressive development of mankind's artistic culture. National character always, if we follow Lenin's teachings on the two cultures, asserted itself in art not as a focus of national ethnographic origins, but as an expression, based on ``sympathy with the workers'', of the __PRINTERS_P_161_COMMENT__ 6---121 161 essentially internationalist ideal of the free development of the human personality.
At the same time we must remember something else. Every ruling class of any exploiting formation strives to present itself as spokesman for the national interests. False national character of this sort is, in practice, necessarily linked with a corresponding ideological brain-washing of the masses. In the final analysis false national character, as a rule, turns into nationalist doctrine. In reality the national coincides with national character only when it includes progressive and humanistic ideals and only when valid trends of the progressive course of history can be seen in it.
When we speak of national character as an aesthetic principle, then we have in mind the spontaneous or conscious expression by the artist of ``popular opinion'', about which Pushkin wrote in ``Boris Godunov, or ``popular thought'', which Lev Tolstoy believed to be the basic principle and source of inspiration in his heroic epic War and Peace.
The humanistic and the universal in works deserving of the name ``popular'' always appears in their characteristic national garb.
In Russian literary classics the orientation around national character as a rule, firstly, consistently broadened the geography of the place of action, widened the circle of social problems, and also augmented and democratised the social structure of the characters involved in the orbit of works of art. All this, naturally, had a direct influence on the vocabulary and entire formation of literary language, brought it closer to folk speech, and created the prerequisites for literary language to become truly national in character.
Secondly, national character gradually rebuilt the entire structure of a work of art: ``popular thought'', now by ``overt'', now by ``covert'' devices used indirectly in the graphic formation of the work itself accentuated and revealed the author's attitude to the life reproduced by him.
Thirdly and finally, the aesthetic principle of national character led to the fact that the talented artist now created not for select connoisseurs but wanted his works to be^ccessible ``to any folk" and to promote the spiritual growth of the broadest sections of the population.
The humanism and democracy inherent in truly popular works elevated the. appropriately moulded national content imparted to them by the masters of Russian literature to a universal level.
It must be noted that the forming and development of national 162 character in art was linked to the forming and replacement of various types of creativity and various methods. The progressive ideas of the liberation movement at the beginning of fee 19th century found their expression in Russian literature, as is known, first and foremost in romantic poetry. Romanticism, and not only Russian romanticism, inscribed the call for the embodiment of national character on its banner and substantially enriched many literatures. National character and the search for folk colouring brought about an active interest in history. However this passion for history, of course, was not equivalent to the artist's historical method of thinking. For the romantic, who on the whole thought in analogies and all the more so in an era of the yoke of censorship, a historical personality or event was only a means for self-expression and expounding political conceptions.
However the ``spirit of history'', in conjunction with romanticism, brought other fruits as well. On the example of the formation of England as a united national state, Walter Scott, in artistically researching the historical conditionality of national types and characters, and in delving more deeply into the concrete past and into its movement towards the present, not only reached the frontiers of realism but also paved the way for the appearance of the critical realists. It is not without reason that namely the historical method, in the words of Vissarion Belinsky, formed the new trend in art in the 19th century and helped it ``divine the secret of modern life".^^1^^
The historical method, which became the typological and aesthetic principle of critical realism, created the necessary conditions for the embodiment of the national character in art and for reflecting the most significant social, moral and philosophical problems of the time.
In this quality the ``old realism" was the direct predecessor of the new. The work of Maxim Gorky, Alexander Serafimovich, Martin Andersen-Nexo, Henri Barbusse, Jaroslaw Hasek, Anna Seghers, Marie Pujmanova and many other outstanding writers who laid the foundations for the new art is eloquent proof of this.
Artists were led to historical method and national character, which formed a purposeful unity in tune with the times on the basis of the ideological and aesthetic adherence to party principles, by other sufficiently complicated routes. Mayakovsky, and not he alone of course, came through the negation of all sorts of traditions to a conscious acceptance of them. Vitezslow Nezval, Louis Aragon _-_-_
^^1^^ W. G. Belinsky, Complete Collected Works, Vol. VI, M., 1955, p. 278 (in Russian)
163 and Paul Eluard came from decadent anti-historical surrealism to a realism which comprehended the truth of history. Bertolt Brecht and Johannes Becher greeted the revolution and crossed over to the position of socialist realism after ``boiling too long" in the ``cauldron'' of leftist expressionism. I. Ehrenburg, I. Selvinsky and many other writers reached socialist realism by their own routes after casting off decadent infatuations alien to their talents and interpretation of the world and outgrowing various ``isms''.From a romanticism partly imitative and partly abstract to a revolutionary romanticism in which the romantic perception of life turned out to be an artistic embodiment of the truth of life itself---such was the road to socialist realism for a number of talented Soviet poets: Bagritsky, Tikhonov, Aseyev. In tune with the rhythm of history, the poetic rhythms and images of the poets of the ``Komsomol appeal" Svetlov and Bezimensky also contained historical method and national character inseparably linked with aesthetic principles, in the individual realisation of which was formed the creative method of our literature, viable and constantly renewing and improving itself.
It is highly significant that not critically realistic but rather chiefly romantic tradition shaped the aesthetic principles of the new creative method of the Polish revolutionary poets Wladyslaw Broniewski and JulianTuwim as well. For according to the valid observation of the Marxist literary critic Dimshitz, not only Gorky's realism but also his romanticism, if we are to be consistent, ``carried many more elements forming the future socialist realism than, say, the critical realism of Veresayev, Chirikov, Bunin, and the young Leonid Andreyev."^^1^^
Many paths led to the new art. Persistent literary study, association with Marxism, the logic of one's own path in life, a stubborn desire to understand and communicate the truth of history created by revolution---all this helped the beginning men of letters to find themselves and their place in art. Life itself and the revolutionary struggle directed by the Party was the best schooling for the young artists.
The young writers who came into literature along with the October Revolution acquired a feeling for the historical method through their own revolutionary and life experience. During the years of the Civil War writers who were soldiers, commanders, and political workers for the most part had their literary training in army newspapers. They included such dissimilar talents who won a wide popularity as Babel, Vesyoli, Vishnevsky, Gaidar, _-_-_
^^1^^ A. Dimshitz, ``Some Problems of Genesis" in: Voprosy literatury No. 10, 1967, p. 27
164 Ivanov, Katayev, Koltsov, Lavrenyov, Ostrovsky, Fadeyev, Fedin, Sholokhov, and Shchipachyov.Not only a direct but also a basic, inner relationship with the people, who sensed in themselves for the first time the creative force of history, led these young literary artists, who in the class struggles had associated themselves with Marxism-Leninism, to the aesthetic, free expression of an adherence to party principles. The Revolution shaped the features of the new type of writer. His characteristic traits were very precisely determined by A. V. Lunacharsky in his response to D. Furmanov's premature death: ``He was exceptionally responsive to any reality, a true, intent realist; he was an ardent romantic, able to respond to the genuine enthusiasm of both personalities and the masses of the people without false passion, but with unusual sincerity, with sympathy and words of inner emotion. But neither did his realism nor his romanticism even for a moment force him to deviate from his inner Marxist regulator."^^1^^
Both in the creative work and in the social actions of writers like Furmanov the ``inner regulator" was the class-party approach which permitted them, if we again use Lunacharsky's words: ``...to delve more deeply into all aspects of proletarian life and experience, ...to present us with full-blooded, vivid general conclusions about the processes that are now happening around us, about the dialectical struggle that is seething in the life surrounding us, to show what will win out, and in what direction this struggle tends to develop."^^2^^
The aesthetic principles of socialist realism strengthened and took shape, and were felt by artists to be something necessary and purely personal, especially in those years of the turning point, when reality set before art, which was responding to life's pulse, its ripening questions demanding immediate resolution and comprehension; in such critical moments measured off by the accelerated pace of history Soviet art, like no other art before it, passed the impartial test every time, both before its contemporaries and before tomorrow.
And today, just as they need air and bread, the living and future generations need, no matter how stern it may be at times, the truth about the 20th century, a time when ``pre-history'' has ended but when the ``true history of mankind" has not yet begun _-_-_
^^1^^ A. V. Lunacharsky, Article on Soviet Literature, M., 1971, pp. 424--25 (in Russian)
^^2^^ Quoted from the book: N. A. Trifonov, A. V. Lunacharsky and Soviet Literature, M., 1974, p. 403 (in Russian)
165 everywhere on our planet. A responsibility before the people, who are waiting now, without delay, for such spiritual nourishment as will help them see themselves and the truth, directed towards the future, of the life they are creating, and will give them moral confidence in the correctness of their daily pursuits which are growing into exploits---with just such a responsibility is imbued the best of everything that socialist realism creates and will create. [166] __ALPHA_LVL2__ ON THE NATIONAL AND MASS CHARACTER OF ARTY. Kartseva
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.The principle of the national character of art is one of the most important in Marxist-Leninist aesthetics. Marxist aesthetics understands national character first and foremost as an expression of the ideological and aesthetic ideas and interests of the people in art. National character in art also presupposes its accessibility to the people at large. In socialist art national character is inseparably and organically linked with its mass character.
This article will examine the different conceptions of mass and national character which demonstrate the complexity of the ideological struggle around these problems, problems which have philosophical, historical, social and aesthetic significance.
Scientific and technological progress and the rapid development of still newer means of mass communication have necessitated an accurate definition of the broad term ``mass character'', which is now in use not only in reference to socialist art but which is used in the West also in reference to a certain portion of bourgeois art. In each of these two cases it is filled with different and diametrically opposed content.
And so, Herbert Marcuse states that in every mass reproduction not only a quantitative but also a qualitative change in the initial aesthetic value of the work of art is inevitable. Marcuse polemicises with critics who state their satisfaction apropos of the fact| that classics have left their ``mausoleums'' and have joined the masses. H. Marcuse considers that the advent of the works of the classics into the modern world in paperback editions is attended by a cardinal transformation of their content. In addition they ostensibly forfeit their antagonistic power of alienation which was the main criterion for measuring their authenticity.
167Like many other bourgeois researchers of the problem of mass character Marcuse does not want to see the diverse nature of definite cultural phenomena and does not wish to distinguish between consumer culture and democratic culture. When the works of Dante, Whitman, Tolstoy, Balzak, i.e., works of true cultural value, are published in huge editions, then this is a progressive -phenomenon. And H. Marcuse's philosophical arguments about how the works of the classics have lost their social significance and critical power are groundless.
The mass reproducing of books in the West has given rise to serious problem which Marcuse does not notice, but which is far from being immaterial for the development of literature. As soon as paperback editions turned into big business, questions immediately arose which were never posed earlier in normal publications and smaller editions, or in any case never so acutely. It happened that along with works of the classics and venerable modern writers, second-rate literary products also began to be published in paperback. Why? The answer to this question is simple and is hidden not only in the definite ideological and aesthetic purposes of the publishers but also in the economic conditions of the mass producing of products of the human mind in capitalist society. In order to agree to print an inexpensive book, the publisher must be convinced beforehand that he can sell a large edition, otherwise he will not make a profit. And where does this leave novice writers? The businessman himself is often not in a position to decide whether a distinctive and talented book will be successful or not. Nor can a single consultant tell him this for certain. A risk is necessary. But in huge editions such a risk could be ruinous. On the strength of these reasons either the books of authors who have already achieved popularity or pulp literature---cheap looe and crime novels of low manner---which is always in mass demand in western society, are published.
Though the problem of profitability also exists in the affairs of Soviet book publishing, profit as an economic lever is absent in it. In our publishing houses there are strong barriers against trite, vulgarity, low standards, and antihumanism. Therefore mass reproducing in our pountry has a different character than it has in the West. Under socialism the printed word brings culture to the masses of the people and promotes the moral and aesthetic shaping of the human personality.
The nature of the mass character of art as an expression of the content of any culture is closely linked with the use of definite expressive ways and means of aesthetic influence. The mass culture 168 of the West invariably strives to entertain and to provide a show achieving this through proven means.
The orientation around success mentioned above involves not only the mass reproducing of books but also the proliferation of films, television programmes and advertisements. From this point of view it is unimportant out of what material this or that film is made---historical, biographical or contemporary---since the process of making it is essentially indifferent to that material and proceeds not from it but rather from the task that stands before the film. A sufficient quantity of nudity and impressive bloodshed, a heap of sentimentality and profiteering by showing children, animals and defenceless girls always unerringly have an effect on the audience.
One ought also to judge the character of the heroes of a work of bourgeois, so-called mass culture and those of socialist culture for the masses of the people by proceeding not from forms, external appearances, mannerisms and habits, but from content. The fact lies not in how the hero looks or how much he uses his fists but rather in those social and political ideals which that hero embodies.
It is incorrect to consider mass culture a child of only the technological age; it is necessary to recall the historical roots of that phenomenon. Mass culture existed in various forms in different stages of the development of human society. The ideological and methodological principles for analysing mass culture are given in the works of Marx and Engels which were written in the last century. The fact is not even in isolated utterances but in the specifically historical approach elaborated by them for evaluating some of the trends of mass culture and also in showing the close relation of the manifestations of the spiritual life of society to its material basis and to the aims, aspirations and ideals of the ruling class. ``The class which has the means of material production at its disposal,'' they wrote, ``consequently also controls the means of mental production."^^1^^
The reasons for such broad diffusion of mass culture in modern bourgeois society lie not in the scientific and technological revolution. It would be naive to think as the Luddites once did that evil is brought on by technical devices themselves. The,sources of this phenomenon are concealed not in scientific and technological progress, though it actually promotes the development of mass culture, but rather in the commodity character of private-- _-_-_
~^^1^^K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, Moscow, 1976, p. 59
169 ownership relations which Marx and Engels had already indicated in Capital. The main and dominant, feature of bourgeois mass culture is the fact that being a product of spiritual production it stands in the same rank with consumer goods, a fact which gives rise to many important consequences involving both its content and form.There is a sharp distinction between bourgeois mass culture and a genuine popular culture serving the masses of the people. V. 1. Lenin conceived of socialist culture as one accessible to the masses of the people, however he did not conceive of it as one Jacking a significant spiritual content. The leader of the proletariat considered that serving the people consisted not in adapting to their cultural backwardness but in enriching the masses of the people spiritually and artistically. Namely this is lacking in bourgeois mass culture, which is reduced to the position of a commodity and strives at any cost to satisfy the tastes of the consumers.
In this way the distinction between it and a truly mass socialist culture lies in the very content of the concept of culture. This is why the term ``consumer culture" is much more suitable for designating this phenomenon in the West. It adequately reflects both the system of values embodied in the works of art and the system of values by which man is guided in perceiving them.
If the main and determining indicator of bourgeois mass culture is its marketability, then like any other commodity it has to be in demand and has to be able to satisfy this demand. And in order to do this mass culture must respond to a definite consumer credo: everything that the man in the street buys must be pleasant, comfortable and demanding little effort. These qualities rarely coincide with true art, but for that they are easily included in its ersatz. That is namely why the term ``consumer culture" is the most accurate in disclosing the very essence of the phenomenon. In addition, the term ``mass character" forfeits two different meanings which are now enveloped by it when the question involves bourgeois culture and socialist culture.
The mass character of consumer culture presupposes an earlier set commercial purpose. The conscious programming of the psychology of the man in the street is already the distinctive feature in a work itself of consumer culture. This was pointed out 25 years ago by Andr\'e Malraux, who wrote: ``...But the difference that separates Giotto from the most mediocre of his imitators is not of the same kind as that which separates Renoir from the caricaturists of La Vie Parisienne... Giotto and the Gaddi are separated by talent, Degas and Bonnat by a schism, Renoir and `suggestive' 170 painting by what? By the fact that this last, totally subjected to the spectator, is a form of advertising which aims at selling itself."^^1^^
The mass character of democratic and socialist culture is closely connected with its national character. Under the conditions of capitalist society a truly national work, however, does not always get mass distribution. And, on the contrary, mass character by no means always becomes an equivalent of national character.
In the last century A. S. Pushkin wrote in the essay ``On the National Character in Literature": ``One of our critics, it seems, thinks that the national character consists in choosing subjects from native history. (...) Others see the national character-in words, i.e., they rejoice in the fact that in expressing themselves in Russian they have used Russian expressions."^^2^^ The great Russian poet correctly believed that neither the first nor the second give the essence of national character in literature, which Pushkin defined as an ``image of thoughts and sensations, a host of customs, superstition sand habits belonging exclusively to a certain people,'' and I define as a measure of the depth and adequacy of the reflection of the make-up, world outlook and ideals of a people in a work of art.
One recalls these words of Pushkin while reading the research of certain bourgeois aestheticians who try without any reservation to declare such a wide-spread genre of American cinematography as the Western as having national character. Of course there is no doubt that it is closely connected with a ``subject of native history''. But is the Western as a whole an American national epic as certain western critics affirm? I doubt this.
In my view you can speak of epic traits only in the best individual Westerns which relate the odyssey of millions of migrants---their single combat with nature, their courageous readiness to face the unknown.
Only a few of the best Westerns like, for example, ``The Oxbow Incident'', directed against lynching, or ``Little Big Man'', truthfully showing how the whites treated the Indians, reincarnated the brutality contained in these stories and directed their wrath against the brutality of the victors.
However, considerably more often the Western greedily soaks up everything that emphasises the brutality of the moral atmosphere during the times of the conquest of the West. It is exactly this brutality that is the principal motivation for the ruthlessness, at _-_-_
^^1^^ A. Malraux, ``Art, Popular Art and the Illusion of the Folk" in: Partisan Review, Sept.-Oct., 1951, p. 26
~^^2^^ A. S. Pushkin, Complete Collected Works in ten volumes Vol. 7, M., 1958, pp. 38--39 (in Russian)
171 times extreme, that reigns in films of this genre. On the other hand the Western, notwithstanding the authenticity of the details of the background of the times put into such films, goes back more to literary tradition than to history.That is how affairs stand with the ``subject of native history''. As to the ``national character of words and expressions'', about which Pushkin also wrote, then in this too the Western often displays a pseudo-national character. This is particularly distinctly revealed in jokes and stories thought up in imitation of folklore.
All this speaks of the fact that the Western, in its mass manifestations, turns into a genre of consumer culture. The mass character and the national character: in an antagonistic society these two concepts, as a rule, fail to concur. In general, national character is uncommon in that part of bourgeois mass culture which creates a pseudo-realistic world. True national character is a genuine embodiment of art's bond with life.
You can observe a reverse phenomenon when a work, national in its essence, does not receive mass distribution in bourgeois society where the means of mass communication are in the hands of people far from defending the interests of the masses of the people. Along this line the folksinger movement---singers who in their songs strove to use the folk traditions of American music---which sprung up at the beginning of the 1960's is extremely interesting. Tunefulness, warmth, sincerity, meditation on life, and notes of social protest are present in the songs of Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylon, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Arlo Guthrie.
The songs of Joan Baezhave their origins in Negro spirituals and in the traditions of the AnglorAmerican ballad. She sings about how man needs a feeling of his own dignity and how society demoralises him, about mothers trying to save their children from hunger and poverty, about little Negro girls blown up along with churches by racists, about American youths dying in Vietnam. Pete Seeger portrays the young people's attraction to humanity, warmth and sincerity in his songs. He seems to talk with the audience, trusting it with his most intimate thoughts. In his songs, which use the traditions of western folk music, you often hear a criticism of American society and a protest against the predatory exploiting of nature. Buffy Sainte-Marie sings about American Indians and uses their folk motifs. Her most famous song---``Now That the Buffalo's Gone"---tells of the present disastrous situation of the native inhabitants of the North American continent. She also wrote the song ``Soldier Blue" which relates the bloody annihilation of an Indian tribe by Custer's soldiers. (This song is sung in the famous film of the same name.)
172The success of the folksingers is not accidental. Their songs meet the youth's yearning for the simple human values, sincerity and tunefulness they are looking for in the treasure-chest of folk music. As the American art scholar H.R. Rookmaaker validly noted in his book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, ``...protest singers, folksingers, these are the people forming the new art still in the making. Their protest is in their music itself as well as in the words....''^^1^^
Art of this kind, which is restoring to the American people not only a feeling of spiritual affinity with other people but also an awareness of folk and national traditions, which are presenting them with simple human joys again, is a phenomenon of a national, democratic culture. However, the possibilities for mass dissemination of such songs are quite restricted. Unfortunately their authors more often than not appear only at improvised performances in front of demonstrators, at protest meetings and in youth cafes, and, naturally, their circle of listeners is considerably narrower than the circle of the consumers of commercial mass culture.
Under conditions of bourgeois society cases when a talented artist, able, thanks to the colossal success of his works, to take control of this or that means of mass communication in his own hands and to achieve in his creativity a combination of national character, democratic character and true mass character, are rare. Charlie Chaplin was one in the 1930's. More often than not in the West works of consumer culture trying to use only external signs of national character, without penetrating into the ideals and world outlook of the people, are published in huge editions, and this naturally leads to artistic defeats.
The antagonistic relationship between mass character and national character about which we spoke earlier is eliminated only under conditions of a socialist society and a socialist culture for the masses of the people. For namely here the kindred bond of art and life, the indivisible union of talent and the environment which produced it, and the faithfulness of art to the interests of the people are most distinctly manifested. The art of socialist realism shows not only the people's part in the historical process but also that the people have become a conscious maker of history. The works of the greatest Soviet masters of literature and the arts are directed against falsified notions about the people and also against portraying the masses of the people as a faceless element. Their characters are distinctive, vivid personalities, and the best in them _-_-_
^^1^^ H. Rookmaaker, Modem Art and theDeathof a Culture, N. Y., 1968, p. 72
173 reflects the potential possibilities of national traits. Of course national character manifests itself not only in the heroes but also in the themes and problematics of the works, in illustrating how the progressive development of society inevitably leads to the appearance of a new man, in the pithiness and capacity of the aesthetic ideals of the artist, and in the optimistic and humanistic impact of works of art.All these characteristics of true national character can be shown by example of an analysis of the creativity of almost any great Soviet artist, whether M. Sholokhov or A. Dovzhenko, A. Tvardovsky or P. Korin, Ch. AitmatoV or L. Gudiashvili. By using an author's privilege of choice we will examine these basic signs of national character by example of the work of Vassily Shukshin, a most talented Soviet writer, film producer and actor who died prematurely.
N. A. Dobrolyubov wrote that for a truly national writer ``much more is needed other than knowledge and keen insight, other than the talent of a story-teller: he needs not only to know, but also to experience profoundly and strongly, to suffer through this life; he himself has to be vitally linked with these people, he has, for a time, to look at things through their eyes, think with their minds, and desire with their will; he has to get into their skin and their soul''.^^1^^ Notwithstanding the fact that these words were written over one hundred years ago, it seems that they were written about Shukshin.
A village lad from the Katun River area in Altai, a village school principal, and the Secretary of the regional committee of the Komsomol, he spent the largest portion of his life, one which turned out to be so short, in a remote Siberian village somewhere not far from the Chuya Highway. And when Shukshin's first short stories were published in the magazine Novy Mir (New World) in 1963 they breathed of the transparent air of the cedar forests and the fragrant moisture of the morning mists drifting over the river. But what is still more important, such a knowledge of the life, customs and manners, and moods of the new Soviet village was revealed in them as is not easily accessible to the detached onlooker and can be drawn only from within, from the very depths of that life. His heroes---grain-growers, tractor drivers, chauffeurs---are shown through a warm feeling and deep respect for their labour, a brilliant knowledge of all the subtleties of life, through an intricate _-_-_
~^^1^^ N. A. Dobrolyubov, Collected Works in nine volumes, Vol. 6, M.-L., 1963, p. 55 (in Russian)
174 mastery in developing characters and the skilful use of all the nuances of language.This utmost authenticity, naturalness, and truthfulness became the distinctive feature ol Shukshin's work in cinema as well. As in literature, he brought his own unique integral world to the screen. The organic character of man's blending with nature, which is so native to him, is one of the main themes of Shukshin the prose-writer as well ,as the cinematographer. By this he emphasised the folk and national nature of his characters. He was convinced that it is easier to preserve a human distinctiveness by an iiffinity with nature. And yet for Shukshin this was not as important as showing the people who preserve their inimitable individuality and retain their human integrity.
Shukshin's positive heroes---people from the masses: loggers, carpenters, hunters, etc.---are by no means average people, but rather people involved in searching for the meaning and goal of life and for a lofty spirituality. Shukshin did not take up backward partiarchal principles. Like in all the best masters of socialist realism the portaying of typical characters takes place in his works under the mark of the true historical method and is closely connected with the progressive advancement of life. How skilfully Shukshin grasped that of the new which made the villager a truly contemporary man, a man of socialist society!
We can see the organic synthesis of national character and historical method in his novella ``Meditations'' from the film ``Strange People". The theme and concept of the responsibility of the simple, ordinary man for the course of history---one of the basic themes and concepts of socialist realist art---was revealed here in full measure. The historical approach of ``Meditations'' is an illustration of how human psychology changes with alterations in the conditions of life.
The hero of ``Meditations'', the no longer young chairman of a collective farm Matvei Ryazantsev, is wondering why modern ``sons'' are not quite like them---' fathers''. While organising the collective farm, fighting at the Iront, and rebuilding the warravaged village, he himself forgot about everything else and did not know other interests or diversions. And his daughter, finishing secondary school, is eager for something else---for a higher education, for a new level of culture, for a different life. Condemning her at first, the father, after much soul-searching, comes to the conclusion that this is the way it should be. It is impossible to stop life's forward advance. An improvement in the material conditions of life and the absence of 175 the problem of bread and a roof should naturally give birth to a thirst for knowledge, progress and spirituality, for man does not live by bread alone. The ability of Shukshin's heroes to rise above mundane calculations and the humdrum of life and preserve and enrich themselves as individuals gives all his films and many of his short stories a vividly expressed optimistic sounding.
It is typical that Shukshin's last film ``The Red Snow-Ball Tree" which ends in the death of the hero, leaves a bright impression. For the theme of the film is by no means the reforming of a bandit and thief as it seems to some shallow viewers, but rather the purification of a human personality and the cleansing of all of life's sediments adherent to it---bravado, boasting, showing off, and mistrust of people---in order to become, like before, so long ago that you cannot even remember, yourself once again. This, the main theme of the picture, is brought to a complete conclusion. Now the hero is ready to accept death, and, like in the best, profoundly national works of world art, this death summons up a catharsis in the audience. One has to be a truly humane artist and deeply love one's heroes in order not to be afraid of such an ending. This optimistic conception of the world in Shukshin's creativity, as generally in socialist realist art, continues and develops in our time the deeply-rooted national traditions of world art.
Falsification, pretentiousness, and artificiality of form and content were .always alien to any genuine national character in literature and art. Even long ago, Marx and Engels, in their critical analysis of Eugene Sue's novel Myst\`eres de Paris, criticised the vulgar understanding of art's link with the interests of the ``lower classes" and showed that by creating the allegorical images the novelist sacrificed the real logic of life for an author's biases. Thus realism in art becomes out of the question. Such is the principal aesthetic conclusion that the classics of Marxism formed from their analysis of that novel. Marx and Engels showed that the basis of the genuine national character in art is a true artistic knowledge of reality and a compliance of the aesthetic ideals with the real content of historical development. Thus national character is inseparable from realism and appears in the form of a unity of the principles of world outlook and aesthetics.
A famous aphorism says that ``good ideas do not necessarily make good films'', and the most progressive idea can be compromised by an inadequate artistic portrayal. However even high artistic form itself can degenerate into an empty play of devices if it is not inspired by a profound content and lofty ideas.
In summing up everything in this article it is necessary to mention that the quality of national character is intimately linked 176 with the peculiarities of a conception of the world and with the creative method of an artist.
At the same time I would like to empasise that even though mass character is an integral concomitant of genuine national character, nevertheless this is a dialectic concept and mass character fer from always appears as a synonym for national character.
[177] __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE ACTIVE NATUREY. Lukin
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.The first aesthetic manifesto of the socialist proletariat, Lenin's article Party Organisation and Party Literature, made a real discovery, defining the qualitative distinction of socialist art. In countering literary careerism and ``aristocratic anarchism" Lenin advanced a new principle; the link between artistic culture and the cause of socialist transformation of society by the whole people.
Lenin held that in retaining its cognitive, enlightening, educational, aesthetic and other functions, proletarian art becomes a powerful factor in the revolutionary struggle for the triumph of the ideals of socialism and communism.
In his statements on general problems of literary creativity and in his concrete evaluations of individual works Lenin, just as Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, constantly drew attention to the special nature of art, in which, as he remarked in one of his conversations with Anatoly Lunacharsky, it is not the naked idea which is important, but rather that the reader or spectator should not doubt the truth of what is depicted or represented, and that he should feel with every nerve that everything happened in just this way, that that was what it felt like, that that is exactly what was said.
Recognising and perfectly understanding the special nature of art as a specific form of aesthetic cognition and aesthetic activity, Lenin at the same time repeatedly noted that the art is bound up with the degree to which the great and noble task of uniting artistic creativity with the working-class movement and with the movement of the socialist proletariat is accomplished. In Lenin's opinion, the only means of ensuring a genuine flourishing of art, of guaranteeing a real, and not merely imaginary freedom of artistic creation 178 and its true activeness is for it to merge with the movement of the truly progressive and consistently revolutionary class.
Giving credit to the artistic legacy of the Narodniks, Lenin pointed out that while giving an authentic reflection of some vital aspects of reality, in particular the social psychology of the peasant masses, they did not understand and were unable to comprehend correctly those contradictions which they so profoundly and artistically convincingly reproduced in their essays, novels and stories. They regarded the peasant as an individualist by nature, psychology, and by mentality and shared the illusions of Utopian socialism. The Narodniks' answer to the spread of capitalism to the village was unsatisfactory. This was mainly because of their petty-bourgeois attitude and their sentimental criticism of capitalism.
It was in fact a socially limited outlook which prevented the old realism from ascending to an understanding of the role of the various classes of the population as independent historical forces, and from considering the conditions which could develop (or, on the contrary, paralyse) the independent and conscious activity of these creators of history. The discord between the authetic representation of reality and the degree to which this reality is comprehended, and the view of the working masses-as an object and not as the conscious creators of history are the factors which account for the limitedness of the old realism.
In his articles on Tolstoy Lenin pointed out the contradictions in the writer's views and the discord between his highly artistic, ruthlessly realistic reflection of reality, his passionate protest and the helplessness he displayed when attempting to comprehend events. Tolstoy as a vehement protestor, impassioned accuser and great artist should have reflected at least some of the essential aspects of the revolution, but this great artist ``clearly did not understand" the revolution, and in his works showed such a lack of understanding of both the causes of the crisis and the means of getting out of it as could be expected from a patriarchal and naive peasants but not from a writer with European education. These glaring contradictions between representation and comprehension were not merely ah individual quirk of the writer's personality but were unavoidable creations of reality itself, and of its own contradictions.
It is essential to eliminate this discord between artistic reflection and the perception of what is reflected, and achieve harmony between them. This opens the road to socialist art. But there is only one way to eliminate this discord and establish harmony between all aspects of creativity and all functions of art, and that is to 179 eradicate all such contradictions of reality through socialist revolution. Thus the tasks of qualitatively renovating art are interwoven with those of renewing reality and with the necessity to reorganise the world socially.
One of Lenin's main and constant concerns was to combine revolutionary practice with scientific theory. Lenin's concept of art is permeated by this very unity. Just as the working-class movement, having spontaneously set out towards socialism, should, in Lenin's opinion, merge with the theory of scientific socialism, so classical art, as it passes to a higher phase in its development, should unite in one harmonious whole the deep realistic reflection of reality and its all-round comprehension and explanation.
It is in the creative work of the socialist artist that such a real harmony between the realistic representation and the comprehension of reality, between all the facets of the artist's consciousness---philosophy, outlook, aesthetics and ethics---and between reflection and creativity is established.
What is the theoretical and social basis of the creative, constructive and transformative principle of socialist art?
Gnosiologically, the activeness of socialist art is conditioned by the fact that it is based on the dialectical and materialist theory of knowledge which combines complete scientific objectivity with a consistent adherence to party principles.
The whole of Marxist philosophy, and the theory of knowledge in particular, is a thoroughly consistent scientific world outlook which expresses the interests, point of view and culture of the revolutionary socialist proletariat. The dialectical and materialist theory of knowledge stands in opposition to contemplative, metaphysical materialism, whose fundamental shortcoming, as Marx pointed out, consists in the fact that reality, sensuality are only taken in the form of an object or in the form of contemplation, and not subjectively as a human, sensuous activity or practice. The great historical service performed by Marx and Lenin in the development of materialist philosophy is that in explaining the content of the reflection of reality in a person's mind, they regarded the process of knowledge as a component part and one of the aspects of man's practical and transformative attitude to the world, as a result of the subject's constructive creativity.
The transforming of reality in the name of a definite social ideal determines the salient feature both of the practical, material and transformative activity of man as well as his spiritual and practical cognition of the objective world.
In cognition, which cannot be a ``lifeless mirror-reflection" of reality, it is the demands of practice that predetermine the 180 activeness of the consciousness which passes through it from contemplation to the cognition of objective reality. Reflection and creation, as two inseparable elements in the cognition of the objective world, do not consequently oppose one another, but are rather in a dialectical unity. Moreover, truly practical activity is impossible without the transformation not only of nature but also of the subject of cognition itself.
Art, being a part of the general process of cognition and of the spiritual and practical cognition of reality includes an active side---attitude, evaluation, and the expression of emotions, feelings, passions, desires and the ``wantings'' of man.
Artistic cognition, i.e., art, was treated by Marx, Engels and Lenin in their analysis of general problems of aesthetics and of individual works of art, both as a specific form of the reflection of reality and as an active aesthetic activity aimed at transforming the world.
In true art the creator of things of aesthetic value is not only the subject but also the object of reproduction. The content of works of art reflects not only reality, but also the artist's experience of life, his social, political, philosophical and moral views and ideas, his world outlook and his aspirations. The reflection of reality, which existed before, and independent of, the creator of things of aesthetic value nevertheless takes place in works of art in accordance with the possibilities and intentions of the artist to organise his observations and experience, and to generalise it and to bring out its regularities.
In its social aspect the creative nature of socialist art is determined by the fact that it is based on the activeness of millions of people who are building a new world, on the historical creativity of the broad masses. The main condition necessary for the fruitful development of socialist art is the creative endeavours of the people, their activeness in all spheres of productive and social work, and the drawing of millions of conscious builders of a new society into the making of history. To a greater degree than ever before, the essential feature of our society at the present stage of its development is determined by an active, creative attitude to reality, an irreconcilability to shortcomings and everything which hinders the advancement of our society, and a striving to make life better, richer and more beautiful.
Gorky's tradition of making active incursions into life, the striving to promote the birth of the new and the progressive was continued and is still being continued today by socialist art, which not only introduced a new hero, the revolutionary, the fighter, the creator, but also demonstrated the qualitatively new features 181 of the socialist artist, a type of artist hitherto unknown in the history of art.
The activeness of socialist art is first and foremost manifested in the solving of the problem of artistic truth which, in its turn, is inextricably tied in with the principles of artistically graphic generalisation and typification. The strength of realist art consists in the truthful portrayal of typical characters in typical circumstances, in the fact that there ``the whole essence is in the individual circumstances, the analysis of characters and psychology of particular types".^^1^^
True art is marked by a ruthless veracity in showing all the complexity and contradiction of social development. At the same time, artistic truth'is incompatible with a demonstration of ``facts'' and ``little facts" taken out of context, out of the whole, and with no connection. It is incompatible with subjectivism and revolutionary phrasemongering which replace objective analysis with ``feeling''.
The essence of the cognition of reality consists in learning to understand the world more profoundly and discover the laws which govern it. Abstractions and generalisations which lead to a deeper, more truthful, and fuller reflection of nature serve these ends. At the same time, such ``correct, serious" (Lenin) generalisations embody all the richness of the particular and the individual. This also helps to reveal the nature of such a specific form of cognition as artistic cognition, in which a special place is occupied by generalisation and typification. Realism implies typification of the regular processes and the essential in life, showing the general through the particular and the individual.
Referring to the behaviour of individual representatives of various social forces and ideological and political trends, the classics of Marxism demonstrated a profound understanding of the complex interweaving of personal qualities, of the psychology of various people and their social and class involvement Lenin, for example, pointed out that the Russian Machists considered Bogdanov to be an individual phenomenon, a chance, ``an isolated case''. In fact, his standpoints and philosophy are not a separate case and are not a solitary phenomenon. Bogdanov was but one of the phenomena ``of that `socially organised experience' which testifies to the growth of Machism into idealism."^^2^^ Before us, as Lenin said, we have an evolution of man, an evolution typical of everyone who breaks with materialism and as a result inevitably _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 184
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 14, pp. 230, 231
182 falls into the arms of idealism. The analysis of the correlation of the personal, the individual, the casual and the general, the lawgoverned which is given in Lenin's works also bears a direct relation to typification as an ideological and aesthetic category, since in realist art social analysis forms the basis of the typication of characters and circumstances. In this we find one of the radical distinctions between realism, as a creative method, and other trends in art. In truly realist art the'individual serves the ends of the generalisation and, in the final analysis, the comprehension of the social essence of phenomena.Thus the actual, and not imaginary activeness of art consists not in the ``creation of myths'', but in the revealing of objective regular processes and in the ability to record them in typical images, and by so doing to inspire the reader or viewer to strive towards a creative transformation of the world. An all-round penetration into the dialectics of the development of life phenomena, events and human characters and actions, the revealing of the essential and characteristic in life objectively makes realism, and in particular socialist realism, the most revolutionary creative method, a method which helps not only to explain but also to change, to transform reality.
Artistic truth, like any other aesthetic category, is a concrete historical concept which changes and acquires a new content in each stage in the development of society and its art. Artistic truth is inseparable from the analysis of the objective concrete historical situation.
For that reason, for example, the examinations made by the classics of Marxism-Leninism of individual phenomena of art as well as of general problems of artistic creativity, associate the true depth of artistic generalisation and the truth in art with the depiction of the ``rebellious reaction of the working class against the oppressive medium which surrounds them...."^^1^^, to the depiction of ``the new building of a new life".^^2^^ Thus, in this new stage in the development of human society and art, artistic truth and typification become inseparably linked to ``the truth of the century'', to the artistic recreation of a progressive, revolutionary development.
As far as the art of pre-socialist formations is concerned and, in particular, Russian classical art of the second half of the 19th century, artistic truth, according to Lenin, was expressed in the _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1975, p. 380
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 412
183 most sober realism, in the depiction of the glaring contradictions of reality, the tearing-off of all masks, the ruthless criticism of capitalist society, and in the revelation of the depth of the contradictions between the growth of wealth and the growth of poverty.The socialist working-class movement and, more so, socialist construction following the triumph of the socialist revolution, which eliminate the contradictions inherent in an antagonistic society and also a result of these contradictions, the frequently tragic gulf between objective and subjective truth---are creating other, different conditions for the artist to actively grasp the new phenomena.
In view of this, the problem of the correlation of the critical and affirmative principles in socialist realism becomes particularly acute in modern aesthetics.
Bourgeois aestheticians and revisionists consider a destructive, negative principle to be the immanent characteristic of artistic creativity, distinguishing it from all other spheres of human activity. That is why they are particularly unhappy with the ``absence'' of critical fervour in socialist art, which they accuse of varnishing, ``embellishing'', and ousting reality, diverging from the truth of life.
The difference of principle between the Marxist-Leninist conception of socialist art and the fabrications of our opponents consists in the fact that the Marxist-Leninist conception makes a concrete historical examination of the functions of art in the structure of various socio-economic formations. The greatness of an artist in an antagonistic society, as one may conclude from Lenin's articles on Tolstoy, is in his ruthless criticism and unmasking of bourgeois social relations, whereas in socialist society art performs fundamentally different functions where the destructive and critical approach gives way to an affirmative and positive approach. As a part of the cause of the party and the whole people, art in the structure of socialist society solves, by its special means, the same problems as do the people as a whole.
The affirmative enthusiasm of the art of socialist realism by no means amounts to an ``apology'', as the revisionists claim. It also contains a critical element, the ruthless criticism and negation of everything which hinders the progress of the socialist proletariat and socialist society. This is not, however, negation for the sake of negation; it always stems from the standpoint of communist social ideals.
Soviet people appreciate works of art which, not covering up the difficulties which fall to the people's lot, describe deprivation and 184 loss, but which none the less emphasise the triumph and irrepressibility of the new, of the communist.
Lenin is known to have commented positively on Mayakovsky's poem ``Conference-Crazy'', which derides conference fuss. Then, during the Great Patriotic War, Pravda published the play The Front by Alexander Korneichuk, which contains a severe criticism of the military commanders who tried to decide the fate of a modern battle by means of a dashing cavalry charge on an armada of tanks. Following the war, a series of essays by V. Ovechkin entitled ``Rural Life" appeared in Pravda. Here the author turned a sharp eye on the problems of agricultural development and criticised individual managers who were unable to work under the new conditions of highly mechanised and complex production. A few years ago, the film ``Chairman'', which tells of the difficult process of rebuilding the war-ruined economy, evoked a truly nation-wide response.
Soviet art has never avoided and will never avoid a depiction of the at times tragic collisions, sharp conflicts, social upheavals, errors, frustration of illusions, and personal dramas which attend the establishment of the new world and the formation of the new man.
The artistic reflection of reality is a creative process in which the artist penetrates into the regular processes of life, reveals its essential aspects, and prevailing trends and affirms the new, which is born in the struggle with the old, the negative and the obsolete. Such reflection is incompatible both with ``apologetics'' and with what Lenin called ``vain'' negation. Socialist art has a great power of influence, but while unmasking and condemning the negative, the old and that which hinders progress, it sees its prime task in supporting and nurturing the young shoots of the new life by setting a positive example, which only under socialism has been given the opportunity to exert its mass influence.
Socialist realism, the product of life itself and the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, has renewed and enriched all the vital functions of art which are designed to have an active effect upon man, the cognitive, educational, social and aesthetic functions. The creative activeness of the art of socialist realism is also its qualitatively new feature which makes this art a step forward in the development of world art.
[185] __ALPHA_LVL2__ SOCIALIST REALISMI. Kulikova
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.During the fifty years of socialist society's existence socialist culture has been formed, developed, and has blossomed. This includes artistic culture, a party, class culture which has become ``part of the comrnpn cause of the proletariat".^^1^^ The art of socialist realism which prevails in the socialist countries, expresses the interests and ideals of the working people and opposes bourgeois art and the bourgeois ideals which this art expounds. It is of international nature and has wide significance and influence throughout the world. Socialist realist art expresses the interests and embodies the ideals not only of the peoples of socialist countries but also of progressive people all over the world.
The socialist realist method is founded upon the teaching of Marxism-Leninism. ``If the world is matter in motion, matter can and must be infinitely studied in the infinitely complex and detailed manifestations and ramifications of this motion, the motion of this matter; but beyond it, beyond the `physical', external world, with which everyone is familiar, there can be nothing."^^2^^ In strict accordance with this idea of Lenin, socialist realist art is aimed at comprehending and analysing the phenomena of the world around us, at transforming this world in the interests of mankind, and at realising the social and aesthetic ideals of creating the most progressive society, a communist society.
The prevailing art of bourgeois society is going in the opposite direction. That art abandons the reflection of objective reality, i.e., _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 45
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 14, p. 344
186 the material world, and maintains that the realistic method is outdated. One can draw one's conclusions about the outcome of abandoning the reflection of the material world from the extreme dissipation of the ``latest'' trends of modernism, whose decline was admitted by bourgeois art theoreticians themselves at the 7th International Congress of Aesthetics.The new social formation, socialism, naturally demanded an art which would answer the new tasks facing society. The socialist realist method is a method of art which serves a developing progressive society. Artists who employ this method do not limit themselves to a statement of existing facts and phenomena, or to a fixation of observations, no matter how astute. Socialist realism is guided by the present and strives towards the future. At the dawn of the formation of this method Maxim Gorky noted: ``What we need to know is not only two realities---the past, and the present in which we participate to a certain extent. We also need to know a third reality, that of the future.... We must somehow include this reality in our everyday life, and we should depict it.Without this reality we cannot comprehend what the socialist realist method is."^^1^^
Lenin's theory of reflection is the direct theoretical basis of socialist realism. Lenin noted specifically that reflection is not a simple, direct, ``dead-mirror'' action, but a complicated, dichotomous, zigzag-like one, which contains the possibility of departing from real life. The Leninist theory of reflection leads socialist realist artists to comprehend the complex dialectical connections among the phenomena of reality. Many a time Lenin stressed the eternally vital, dialectical nature of cognition: ``Cognition is the eternal, endless approximation of thought to the object. The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not `lifelessly', not `abstractly', not devoid of movement, not without contradictions, but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution."^^2^^ As we see, Lenin's theory of reflection does not limit the possibilities of cognition by fixing contradictions, but necessarily entails an attempt to solve those contradictions. The way they are solved depends upon the activity of people themselves, upon their world outlook, their standpoint, and the purposefulness of their actions.
The active, creative nature of socialist realism was defined by Gorky: ``Socialist realism proclaims being as an action, as creativity whose aim is to achieve the continuous development of a person's most valuable individual capabilities in order that he be _-_-_
~^^1^^ M. Gorky, Works in 30 volumes, Vol. 27, Moscow, 1953, p. 419 (in Russian)
~^^2^^V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 195
187 triumphant over the powers of nature, that he be healthy and enjoy long life, and that he derive pleasure from the great happiness of life on earth, which, in accordance with his ever increasing demands, he wishes to change entirely into a wonderful dwellingplace for mankind united into one family.''^^1^^With a greater or lesser degree of accuracy realistic art has always reflected the phenomena of the surrounding world. The degree of accuracy depended upon the talent of the artist, his sophistication, and the depth of his understanding of the phenomena of life and his ability to analyse them. The cognitive value of works of art depends upon the degree of accuracy and depth of reflection of reality in them. Engels placed the work of one of the greatest realist writers, Balzac, very high in this respect. He learned more about French society from Balzac's books ``than from all the professed historians, economists and statisticians of the period together".^^2^^
The writers and artists of preceding epochs, though they accurately reflected the phenomena of their times in their works and had a sufficiently profound understanding of the past, had no recourse to the truly scientific understanding of the laws of social development and, as a rule, would come to a helpless standstill in the face of the vital problem of mankind's future, the problem of how to achieve social progress. Any attempts to describe, even in general terms, the vital and desirable social relations of the future were, as a rule, of a subjective, idealistic and Utopian nature. Marxism-Leninism, the theory of scientific communism, opened up new vistas for artists and men of letters. An understanding of the objective laws of social development permitted the workers of new art, the art of socialist realism, to reveal creatively the ways to a progressive development of human society and the ways to progress and an embodiment of the new socio-aesthetic ideals with extreme variety adequate to life itself. The cognitive significance of art has grown with the appearance of socialist realist art.
The ideological and political maturity of the creative intelligentsia, their awareness of the responsibility for the content and ideological and artistic value of their works are promoting a profound representation of the phenomena of life and the humanistic purposefulness of creativity. Inasmuch as the subjective element in art is the reflection of objective reality by the .individual consciousness of the artist, a consciousness determined by his world outlook, it is natural that the strictly scientific foundations of the Marxist artists' world outlook will have a _-_-_
^^1^^ M. Gorky, Works in 30 volumes, Vol. 27, p. 330
~^^2^^K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1975, p. 380
188 considerable effect upon the nature of their creativity and upon the nature of works of socialist realist art. Traces of subjective arbitrariness disappear from works of art; the objectivity and accuracy of the reflection of reality in art both increase; and the objective overall significance of works of art grows. Art, however, does not lose its special nature as a particular form of social consciousness based upon a graphic reflection of reality from the standpoint of a definite social and aesthetic ideal. And naturally accuracy of reflection does not limit the artists' creative possibilities, for the real world in its development and the infinite variety of the phenomena of life provide inexhaustible material for artistic activity and serve as a never-ending source of creative inspiritation.The nature of socialist realist art is greatly influenced by the Marxist concept of man as above all a social being. As a result in socialist art which authentically reflects reality the personal and the social interact in dialectical unity. Both society and the individual are revealed in works of art in the process of their development, the process of their perfection in accordance with the social and aesthetic ideal of building a communist society and moulding a harmoniously developed personality.
In its comprehension of the place and role of man in life and art socialist realism is diametrically opposed to the trends in modern bourgeois art which set man in opposition to any society, tear him out of his social milieu, present the personality either as an abstraction or as a purely biological specimen, and deny man's ability to achieve perfection and his right to make progressive social changes.
The new tasks faced by socialist realist art and the innovative nature of that creative method itself and its strictly scientific ideological basis have given rise to a new, expanded and more profound understanding of aesthetic categories. The most important categories of aesthetics and art such as the beautiful, the sublime, the tragic and the comic reflect the prospects of the development of society and the human personality. The category of the aesthetic ideal has grown in importance. This key aesthetic category, which in many ways determines the others, has embodied progressive people's general conception of the beautiful, of the perfect social formation, and of the progressive man of our times. The category of the heroic has come into the foreground. The image of the positive hero has occupied an indisputably leading place in works of socialist realist art. This hero of the new social formation is not an exceptional ``titanic'' personality, not the ``superman'' of bourgeois pop art. He is the ordinary man of our 189 times and of our society, a man capable of waiving his personal interests, of performing great deeds and even of sacrificing his own life in the name of lofty ideals.
Marxist-Leninist aesthetics understands the category of the typical in accordance with the historical laws of social development not as the mechanical sum total of the phenomena and relations still fairly widespread, but as new, growing and developing phenomena inevitably triumphant in the process of historical development. Thus the basic indication of the category of the typical ceases to be quantitative and becomes qualitative. This new understanding of the typical determines to a great extent the ideological content and nature of the conflicts in socialist realist art in its struggle with vestiges of the past and backwardness, and for the active forming of a progressive world outlook in the spectator, listener or reader.
There may be a question of whether the sphere of significance of socialist realism is not limited to socialist society, where exploitation has been done away with and wide expanses for the development of the human personality and the perfection of the social order have been opened up. Could it be that critical realism, which ruthlessly exposes the faults of the bourgeois social order and thereby proves that it is doomed, is sufficient for progressive artistic creativity in capitalist countries? The answer to these questions is an emphatic no!
In its day, before the Great October Socialist Revolution, the critical realist method produced some outstanding works of art which did great service to mankind and promoted a comprehension of the phenomena of reality. The method of critical realism originated in a bourgeois society based upon antagonistic class contradictions. Critical realist art exposed those contradictions uncompromisingly and set out to defend man against the conditions of the bourgeois world. As the contradictions which were tearing bourgeois society apart became more acute, so did the works of critical realist art. Their positive heroes took and are still taking an active stand against the injustices of an exploiter society, against the oppression and lack of rights of the individual in this society. But they fight against concrete manifestations of evil without having any realistically attainable social and aesthetic ideals. The authors of critical realist works contented themselves with abstract ideals of justice and the freedom of the individual, ideals which were not practically attainable under the conditions of bourgeois reality. The critical realist method forfeited its leading significance and the leading place was taken over by the socialist realist method.
190Works of critical realism are still being created in capitalist countries. To a certain extent they are fulfilling useful functions by exposing the antagonistic contradictions of bourgeois society. This method no longer has real social basis in the new, socialist society, for the growing and developing socialist society is devoid of the internal antagonistic contradictions which the critical realist method is called upon to expose, though non-antagonistic contradictions which are consistently being overcome in the process of social development are inherent in this society. Attempts to portray socialist reality basing upon the principles of critical realism lead to a falsified depiction of reality. This results in the distortion of the truthfulness of the depiction of life; under socialist reality critical realism becomes detrimental realism.
The appearance of such works in socialist countries can be explained by the ideological, philosophical immaturity of their authors, by their misunderstanding of and lack of desire to understand the progressive essence of socialist society and its radical differences from capitalist society. Such one-sided works which distort socialist reality are eagerly published in capitalist countries: the falsified, unsightly ``portrayal'' of socialist reality which they contain gives some comfort to the bourgeois ideologists who do not savour the flourishing of a society which is building communism; and on the other hand these ideologists never relinquish the hope that such types of deceitful works, which disorient the people of their countries, will to some extent contribute to diverting the masses from the building of a new society.
Progressive figures in art who live in capitalist countries are becoming more and more aware of the progressive nature of the socialist realist method and the historical limitedness of critical realism. Thus the English writer James Aldridge recalls Gogol, the devastating exposer of reaction, while calling for uncompromising criticism of warmongers. ``What horror Gogol could find in such men who are trying to conduct human affairs on profitable trade in dead souls. The horror and tragedy and idiocy of it needs a Gogol to present it in its immense human proportions.'' Having noted the significance of Gogol's talent Aldridge sees at the same time the limitedness of his artistic method and writes that ``a Gogol today would not have much difficulty in seeing the way to a better future for his own people. Today he would see a way of salvation, clear and unshakable and unchangeable, not only in the example of his own country; but in all countries where each day another and another soul is added to the number who will refuse to be dead souls on credit to war brokers.''^^1^^
_-_-_^^1^^ James Aldridge, ``If He Were Alive Today'', New Times, No. 12. 1952. p. 18
191However even the critical realist method is not encouraged in capitalist countries: it is tolerated as an undesirable phenomenon, but one not signifying an active threat to bourgeois society. All the fire, the ardour of reactionary propaganda is directed against socialist realism. This propaganda tries to discredit socialist realism because it offers art the widest avenues of active social influence, acts as an effective means of forming progressive ideas and ideals, promotes the moulding of a harmoniously developed personality through the medium of art and helps to turn every person into an active fighter for building a new society, the most progressive human society, the communist society.
While offering men of art vast, in fact truly limitless creative possibilities, socialist realism at the same time charges them with a great responsibility and makes considerable demands upon them. In works of art a true reflection of reality in it% dialectical development can only be attained on the basis of a MarxistLeninist scientific understanding of the laws of social progress. For this reason a mastery of the Marxist-Leninist methodology of comprehending and analysing the phenomena of life is essential to socialist artists.
Lenin disclosed one of the fundamental gnosiological demands of materialist dialectics when he wrote: ``...if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and `mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity."^^1^^ Only having creatively mastered the Marxist-Leninist principles of the dialectical cognition of reality are men of the art of socialist realism in a position to create works of general significance and interest. If an artist, even one who possesses considerable artistic abilities, has not mastered the scientific method of cognising reality and relies on ``inspiration'' and ``sudden insight'', he limits his creative possibilities.
If an artist is to follow successfully the method of socialist realism he must possess a progressive world outlook and must share the viewpoint of the progressive class. He must be deeply convinced in the possibility and necessity of realising communist ideals and believe that these ideals will finally triumph throughout the world, for they express the interests of the working people of all countries, of all continents.
It is because socialist realism aims at the embodiment of lofty aesthetic ideals and poses problems of great importance to the _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 32, p. 94
192 artist, it demands artist's full maturity and development. While expanding and deepening the means of expressing artistic abilities, the socialist realist method does not of course replace talent, nor does it make up for lack of it. It is a complex and profound method which demands independence of thought on the part of the artist. It calls on him to stretch all his powers of creation, to produce a powerful and sincere burst of creativity. Because they so obviously do not correspond to the lofty ideal inherent in socialist realist art, primitive works of art created ``to a ready-made scheme" and not inspired by an artist's independent thought look so terribly mediocre. These works discredit the artist, but in no way the method which he was unable or unwilling to master. Art absolutely demands the unity of a profound content and perfect form and takes harsh revenge upon the artist if he separates them.Modern bourgeois art makes few demands upon the artist: art, devoid of deep content, which has absolutised form and denied the communicativeness of a work of art, and has done away with objective criteria for evaluating it opens the road to any charlatan.
The necessary, fundamental quality of socialist art is ideological meaningfulness. Socialist realist art is full of the most progressive ideas, since it is inseparably linked to communist ideology. In their ideological purposefulness the art and method of socialist realism serve the interests and ideals of the working masses of the whole world, and this is what constitutes the greatest significance of socialist realism in our time.
Do bourgeois theoreticians now realise the necessity for ideological purposefulness in art, the necessity for it to be inspired by ideas of general importance? Yes, namely now, under the pressure of reality, and most of all under the influence of socialist reality, bourgeois theoreticians are compelled to recognise, and are gradually coming to recognise the fact that for modern art to develop it must be tied to life, to a certain definite ideology which directs it. In his research work Kapitalismus und Sozialismus in never Sicht, Albert Lauterbach directly expresses his sound point of view that any activity, including artistic activity, needs ideological support, that an ``\thinspace`ism' requires the moral support and the spiritual orientation of an `ideology' for it to become valid and to dominate the world outlook of the masses."^^1^^ Hopelessness and alienation of contemporary ``elitist'' art from life has become so evident that Herbert Read, the English bourgeois aesthetician, admitted this shortly before his death. In his last book, which bore _-_-_
^^1^^ Albert Laiuerhach, Kapitalismus und Sozialismus in never Sicht, Reinbek, 1963, S. 11
__PRINTERS_P_192_COMMENT__ 7---121 193 the telling title To Hell With Culture, he wrote: ``The mistaken presentation of my point of view, of which I have myself been guilty in the past, is to describe art as self-expression. If every artist merely expresses the uniqueness and separateness of his self, then art might be disruptive and antisocial...."^^1^^Over ten years have passed since bourgeois scholars `` discovered" the truth, long known to Marxists, that art needs ideological purposefulness and meaningfulness. Since that time bourgeois aestheticians and critics have been stubbornly trying to find a way of bringing art closer to life and of increasing the influence of bourgeois art on people. However their fear of true progress, their class dislike of progressive ideas and their fear of the realist method which truthfully reflects in the works of art the antagonistic contradictions of capitalist society make it impossible for them to revive their art.
The future belongs to the art which enriches people spiritually, which expresses their interests, ideals and aspirations, to the art which, along with other forms of social consciousness, promotes social progress and the moulding of a harmonious personality, to the art which brings people joy and lofty aesthetic pleasure. And in our age that means socialist realist art. The treasure-house of world culture wilt be added by works of art which immortalise the greatest victory of mankind, the transition to the new, socialist formation which opens boundless vistas of freedom and progress before man---the works of art created by the socialist realist method.
_-_-_~^^1^^H. Reed, To Hell With Culture and Other Essays on Art and Society, London, 1963, p. 3
[194] __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE SOLUTION IS IN POETRYS. Yutkevich
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.While we were preparing to make ``Lenin in Poland'', a new film about Lenin, our star actor Maxim Shtraukh was producing ``Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder" in the Mayakovsky theatre and I was staging ``Der Aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui" in the Moscow University Student theatre, two plays by Bertolt Brecht, a playwright very akin to us in spirit and style. Jules Renard was obviously right when he wrote in his Journal : ``We do not have the same thoughts, but we do have thoughts of the same colour.''
In writing the scenario Yevgeny Gabrilovich and I did not intend to follow the superficial features of Brecht's poetical scheme, however I often turned to Brecht as I pondered on our new picture of Lenin.
``What should we fear in our profession? We must fear the multiplication table,'' wrote the poet Mikhail Svetlov. ``You did not invent the fact that nine times nine equals eighty-one. It was not your idea that one should love one's country.
``But you should tell people how to love it, you should not simply repeat patriotism, but you should continue it. Otherwise you will be like the man who invented the wooden bicycle, not knowing that a metal one already existed."^^1^^
One thing was clear to us: we had no right to repeat what we had discovered in our earlier films. One cannot transfer a sculptor's methods to the cinema or the theatre. You cannot act a ``monument''. But we needed to create a sound basis in our scenario if we were to create the image of the living Lenin. I am now as convinced as ever that any innovative intention must first of all be grounded in the dramatic structure of the future film.
_-_-_^^1^^ Mikhail Svetlov, ``History of One Poem'', Selected Works in two volumes, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1965, p. 184 (in Russian)
195This is where Brecht came to my rescue with his concept of ``Verfremdung'', ``distancing'' or ``alienation''. To alienate an event or a character, he said, means primarily to strip the event or the character of everything which is self-explanatory, familiar and obvious, and so arouse amazement or curiosity. The idea of the technique is to allow the spectator to make fruitful criticism from a social standpoint. The old drama did not allow dramatists to depict the world as many people today see it to be. The course of one human life typical for many, or a typical conflict between people could not be depicted using earlier dramatic forms.
From this point of view the material of the film seemed to be sufficiently ``alienated'', for everything in it was capable of arousing the necessary sensation of unfamiliarity. For the first time we were taking the risk of showing Lenin away from the familiar setting of revolutionary Petrograd or Moscow in the environment, little known to the audience, of pre-war Poland, surrounded by Zakopanie mountain folk and Krakow social democrats, and, finally, in a prison cell in the provincial Austrian town of Neuemarkt---New Targ.
So it was in the selection of material for the film that we were given our first chance of re-thinking the subject. But, as experience showed us, the mere ``distancing'' of the material is not enough, and the unfolding of this material through the medium of traditional drama and out-dated direction would have led us to failure.
The image of Lenin is the most precious thing in the heart of a Soviet person, and for that reason there could be no room for a recipe, cliche or ``playing to win''. Mere diligence in studying iconog'raphy, mere painstaking imitation of attempts by painters, sculptors and photographers to catch Lenin's features would not suffice. We had to remember that this was a legendary image, and it seemed to me that it was one which must be approached with all the tremulation of an artist, summoning the power which is unique to art, the power of poetry.
In order to enter into the spirit of the age and to recreate it in images, it would not have been enough merely to make a painstaking study of the historical material, and this task could not be solved by analysis alone. WHat was needed here was that synthetic generalisation which Lev Tolstoy so aptly defined as ``poetry''.
The solution is in poetry: that is the road which the Soviet artist will take when he is faced by the task of depicting in art scenes of our great history, the road which will be the shortest way to the hearts of Soviet spectators.
196But as one approaches the image of Lenin, it appears that the inertia of one's thought is still extremely strong. In practice, caution in regard to the image of Lenin turns into timidity reinforced by various theoretical taboos which fetter the artist's will and imagination. But what need is there for an art which cannot communicate anything to the audience other than what it could discover from other sources, such as history books, political articles and contemporary memoirs?
It goes without saying that in making films about the history of the revolution it is indeed essential to rely first of all upon accurate facts and documents. They must be assimilated comprehensively. However this knowledge is only the first stage of the artist's creative quest. It not only predicts, but commits him to the next step, that of the artist's comprehension of and his profound personal relation to those facts and documents. Only when they have been passed through the artist's creative personality will they become artistic phenomena.
This gave rise to the need not only to disclose the facts of Lenin's life, but also to show him as a thinker and as a many-sided personality. What will the audience learn that is new if we conscientiously ennumerate the events and gatherings which took place in the Krakow and Poronin periods of Lenin's stay in Poland, and if we limit ourselves to reproducing the day-to-day details of that time? In the final analysis this would be nothing more than an illustration of what is already very well known.
But then try to imagine what Lenin thought about in those sleepless nights spent on a prison bed in New Targ, what a truly dramatic effect the tragedy of the war had on him for it was a war which threatened to destroy his life's work, think of how tensely he was tormented by his enforced helplessness in the very days when mankind, wallowing in its own blood, thirsted for those sole words of prophecy which would have shown it the way out of the hell of war. To depict this could become the aim of art.
And all this feverish, relentless process of thought spurred on by history, this bundle of sensations in which hopes and disappointments, visions and conclusions mingled together with the heartache and the strength of mind, all this was to form the essence of the drama upon which our scenario was based. Hence emerged the first new element of our conception of the film. It would be a monologue, where the dominant element of the sound fabric would be the voice of Lenin's thoughts. The second innovative element of the dramatic structure of the screenplay was that it would exploit a different approach to time and space, dealing with the twelve days which Lenin spent in prison, and not being a mere chronological story of the events.
197The internal monologue was necessary not to convey the incoherence or the imperfection of the cerebral organism, or as an experiment to record the labyrinths of the subconscious, but to study the process by which Lenin's thoughts were formed.
Possibly it was in those very tormenting nights in the New Targ prison cell that Lenin first conceived of the idea of turning the imperialist war into civil war, an idea brilliant in its simplicity and effectiveness, and subsequently proven correct by the whole development of history. We felt that this basic and profoundly modern idea must have come to Lenin in the process of extensive contemplation modified by everything which Lenin saw and observed in pre-war Poland.
For this reason his thoughts on the historical destinies of Russia and Poland, on the nature of patriotism, the dangers of nationalism and chauvinism, and finally on those human feelings--- friendship, love, faithfulness---which come under trial in every man's life during tragic moments of history, are so important. I am convinced that the internal monologue provides immeasurably more opportunities for undertaking this task than the usual dialogue.
What seems to be of even more importance for contemporary cinema is that there should not be only the internal monologue of the character, but also a kind of internal monologue originating in the author of the film himself. It may not be physically heard from the screen, this voice of the author's thoughts, but must penetrate every inch of the film, expressing the personal, biased, internal theme which moves the artist. If, in a work of art, you are not aware of the author's obsession with his theme, a theme which urgently demands to be expressed, then it will remain a mere catalogue, an illustrative enumeration of events and facts. One must not limit oneself to hiding behind the camouflage of the character no matter how important or great he may be in his own right. Lehin was a genius of humanity, but the simple fact of his physical presence on the screen does not make the film a piece of art.
Lenin the man belongs to history, but the circle of his ideas and his thoughts is vast and all-embracing. More than that, they are modern and vital. Our 20th century is the century of Lenin, and the destiny of all mankind and of each of us (whether he is aware of it or not, whether he likes it or not) is predetermined by his scientific insight.
One of these insights which affects me especially is to be found in his famous article on Communist subbotniks ``The Great Beginning'', where Lenin formulates the qualitatively new psychological traits which appear in man under liberated labour: 198 his feeling of responsibility not only for the fate of ``close'' people, but also for those who are ``distant'', his victory over the atavism of instinctive desire for possessions which have been perverted by the laws of the capitalist system.
The ideological battle-ground is vast, embracing not only the political, economic and social spheres of man's activity. This battle between the old and' the new penetrates the very depths of the human psyche, involving the whole complex system of moral, ethical, emotional and aesthetic categories. Here a special role is to be played by art, particularly such a penetrating and infectious form as the cinema.
To Lenin's great idea of the world brotherhood of working people and of human solidarity, his belief in the victory of the new, the socialist features in man's consciousness, bourgeois philosophy contraposes the thesis of the immutability, immanence of a human nature which is incapable of freeing itself from inborn instincts and from a metaphysical fear of the uncognisable laws of the universe.
Lenin is forever alone in our film. He has been cut off from his homeland and his party; he is doomed to a life of an emigre, a life that is far from cheerful. In addition he has just been locked up in a prison cell. This is where we meet the theme of the vanquishing of solitude, a theme I find extremely important. No, a man whose whole life was undividedly dedicated to fighting for the happiness of ``distant'' people, a man who was fated not to explain the world but to change it, cannot be alone. In the ideological and aesthetic struggle this film on Lenin should be a defender of an eradicable faith in man, and it could not fail to be a film about vanquished solitude and about human happiness.
But all these thematic overtones, so dear to the authors of the film, would have remained merely at the level of ``good intentions" if the whole fabric of images in the work were not saturated by them, if they did not find sufficient embodiment in all aspects of the film, and most important, in the acting.
As I think about the acting problems, I recall a screen test we made. This was a very meaningful experience for me. I asked Maxim Shtraukh to act out the scene we had chosen, the one in which Lenin first appears in the prison cell, with no previous rehearsal. I asked him to forget the equipment, to forget the footage and just to behave in an organic and natural manner, following his intuition, or, to be more precise, to be guided by all the experience which we had amassed in the films we had already made together. This at first seemed a strange problem to both of us, since we had been educated in the Meyerhold and Eisenstein tradition of exact and finely-regulated acting and had always 199 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1976/MLAL268/20070615/268.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.06.15) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ regarded all kinds of improvisation with a certain suspicion, linking it in our minds with dilettantism and vagueness. However it appeared that we too needed to discover some new characteristics of this kind of exercise in front of the camera (he as an actor, and I as director in the filming and editing), characteristics which emerged as a kind of synthesis between strict form and the naturalness and freedom which and modern film director and actor always need.
The tradition of the montage cinema in which the strict composition of a self-containing and extremely plastically expressive shot dictated that the actor fitted into the shot with the exactitude of a centimetre, was taken to its logical conclusion and spent itself in films like ``Ivan the Terrible" by Eisenstein. Neither of us could bear the dilettantism, apparent ``simplicity'' in a character's screen behaviour which replaced this great craftsmanship. That meant we had to look for a new, third way.
I tried my first steps along this way during our screen test. I gave the order ``roll it" and the actor came on camera wearing an overcoat and hat. He faced a bare prison room with a bed, a table and a stool, and began unhurriedly, easily and meticulously tolive in this environment. I was immensely interested to observe, from my position behind the camera, the process of the actor's thinking, the working of his imagination, the way he took off his hat and coat and looked around for somewhere to hang them up.... The way he felt the hardness of the mattress, looked through the grated window, tapped on the wall out of habit as a veteran prison conspirator. How he sat down at the table and began to think.... Then he decided to lie down.... Unlaced his boots.... Threw off his jacket and stretched out, deep in thought.
I did not hurry him nor make any suggestions nor limit him in any way. The film was rolling, and with it scenes of real life were winding onto the spool, of which we became convinced the following day as we watched the strips on the screen.
After the shooting I asked him to record a few sentences from the screenplay, the text of the thoughts which were supposed to accompany this scene in the film. I then synchronised this recording with the film in order to try myself out, to see if this fabricated synthesis of sound and acting would be successful. I thought the result was fantastic and was particularly aware of this success when the sound broke off, and I had a very strong feeling that instead of this pause, I wanted to hear more and more of this voice, the voice of Lenin's thoughts. This meant that it would not be dull or boring to the audience.
Nor should it have been!
200I had given myself a very clear idea of how I was going to work with the actor from then on. I gave Shtraukh the greatest possible freedom, and only corrected his action as far as the camera was concerned. I tried to select this position not from considerations of external decorativeness, but from that of the greatest expressiveness and, at the same time, of simplicity. While we were shooting ``Stories About Lenin" I said that I do not often risk coming too close to the portrayer of Lenin, the actor Shtraukh, using close-ups, as this could be taken as a certain superfluous importunity or tactlessness in respect to the image. At that time I was worried about the problem of choosing expressive means, and now once again this problem cropped up and caused me a great deal of thought. But this time I felt that we had won the right (and this right really did have to be morally won) to come close to Lenin. An actor's eyes are his main means of expression (Meyerhold taught us this through theatre), and one must remember that the camera lens looks a hundred times more searchingly into the actor's eyes and always discovers truth or falsehood in them. This time I took the risk of revealing by means of the close-up the truth of Lenin's image which Shtraukh had accumulated over many years.
Before dealing with editing, I should like to say a few word; about montage in general. Some Western theoreticians have declared that the montage is hopelessly outdated, and works of research have been produced maintaining the invalidity of the montage approach for contemporary cinema. If by the term ``montage'' one means those purely superficial devices which were inherent to the silent film era, then, naturally, many of them have today lost their effectiveness. But montage for me has never been simply a sum of stylistic devices, just as Eisenstein did not see it that way. But it is in fact Eisenstein's montage which is said to be outdated, not only for the reason that sound has brought new principles into the organisation of material, but mainly because the Eisenstein method (as they call it) presupposes an over-active effect upon the viewer. Montage, it is claimed, chooses certain phenomena, foists them upon the viewer, fully expresses the author's idea and hypnotises through the power of its rhythmical effect. That is exactly what certain adherents of modern cinema do not like. They consider that the viewer should be left to himself, and that the artist should not foist any of his own conclusions upon him. The era of ``objective'' cinema, which is obliged only to show, presuming the adult intellect of the viewer, has, they say, now dawned. But I believe that something completely different lurks behind this superficially noble screen of respect for the viewer.
201I feel that the cinematographic narration is not only a technical category, but also an ethical one, and the question of montage also seems to me a philosophical problem. Behind this praise for the ``sequence'', that is, entire sections of film untouched by the editor, which, it is claimed, has replaced the montage approach, lurks a whole system of attitudes which on the one hand reveal an open, sometimes directly expressed desire to de-ideologise the cinema. The montage in its new role, in a changed form, of course, perfected, more flexible and complex, continues to be a vital weapon of principle in our battle for political cinema.
It gives me pleasure to recall the thoughts of the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, who had this to say about screen-play and montage:
``But I think the essential thing is the development, the modification of the screenplay. That is what supplies the structure, the bones of a film. If a director takes a whole heap of useless scenes, that is because the structure was not thought out in advance. The most important thing in editing is to cut, cut and cut again, to cut even the scenes which are dearest to your heart, those which have cost you the most effort in shooting. If a scene i$ not good, that means, if it does not get with the overall effect, it must be ruthlessly cut out.''~^^1^^
That is wonderful advice to all directors, the advice of an artist who could not possibly be called retrograde. I think that the most important thing in a film is its architectonics, which naturally includes all its elements, not only visual but audio as well. Architectonics which is subjugated to the overall intention of the writer and director.
Architectonics, in which one must be able to sacrifice the part for the sake of the whole.
Architectonics which will influence the viewer through its wholeness and through the balance of all its parts.
The magical power of rhythm, not of tempo, but of a complicated, multiform rhythm, continues to be the main pattern of a film, and it is the editing that creates this rhythmical power.
Editing was of particular importance in our film, for the screenplay had neither subtle intricacies of plot, nor superficially dramatic effects, nor a story in the accepted sense of the word. So its rhythmical structure had to be all the more powerful and precise, and this structure is created primarily not by the word, but by depiction.
_-_-_^^1^^ Michel Mesnil, ``Visite i' 1'empereur du Japon. Un entretien avec Akira Kurosawa'', Cinema, 1966, Numero 103, p. 60
202I see the documentary aspect of the film as extremely important, as fundamental. This is precisely why we reproduced Lenin's house with such accuracy. Mountain carpenters built it professionally from real logs. I went to great trouble to shoot some scenes in a real Catholic church (and not in the studios as my producers suggested). Then I obtained some excellent carved bee-hives for the apiary scenes. (I rooted them out in the Krakow Ethnographical Museum.) All this was not for the sake of naturalistic authenticity, but because I was convinced that the problem of the relation and the points of contact. between the so-called ``artistic'' and the ``documentary'' is one of the most important problems in modern art, and that the line of demarcation does not lie at all where we previously had assumed it did.
Such of Eisenstein's films as ``October'', ``The Old and the New'', for example, fell into the category of documentary-when the Brussels film critics declared the results of a survey of the world's best documentary films. Moreover ``Battleship Potemkin" was for many years not included in the category of ``feature'' films in the West. And I consider the film ``Strike'' (much less known in the West) to be the key work of art, out of which grew all the new tendencies---Italian neo-realism, the English documentary school, and subsequently the ``free cinema'', and the best Japanese films, not to mention cinema in countries of the socialist community. We were justified in classifying Eisenstein's films as artistic, feature films. It is clear, however, that as an artist Eisenstein was able to reproduce our history and our modern life with such power and convincingness that by millions of viewers less familiar with these films they were seen as true historical documents.
Another special characteristic of the modern film technique, as I see it, is to be found in orchestration and in its variety of textures. Contemporary painting has taught us to derive aesthetic pleasure from a montage of textures.
In architecture, for example, we take pleasure in contrasts between matt and reflecting surfaces, in the conflict of wood and glass, the juxtaposition of rough natural textures with surfaces which are smooth,and polished.
We have learned to appreciate the uninhibited, natural qualities of materials, of colour, of the alternation of symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes, the elegance of functional streamlining, and many other features which have become familiar both in everyday life and in applied art.
A puppetry interlude was unexpectedly woven into the fabric of the film, a scene which will be emotionally comprehensible to the Polish viewer, though it may seem strange to other audiences. This 203 new and unfamiliar film texture was just as risky as was the texture of the real documentary films, made by Pathe in 1913--1914, which I managed to unearth with the assistance of the workers at the State Film Archives.
I took the risk, as I did in ``The Bathhouse'', of deforming part of the documentary scenes by adapting them, and so giving them the quality I needed to provide a contrast with Lenin's thoughts. I also tried to employ a ``triptych'', in which ordinary newsreel tilms leading up to the outbreak of war served not only as a quotation, but took on a generalising nature.
This also permitted me to exploit a system of visual repetitions in the montage, where scenes of a prancing pig or acrobatic acts from a ore-revolutionary entertainment film create a visual counterpoint which serves to intensify the ``distancing'' effect I was striving for.
As I used all the means of modern cinema to recreate the image of Lenin on the screen, I never once forgot Jules Renard's good advice:
``Never be content---that is the whole essence ot art.
[204] __ALPHA_LVL1__ AestheticsF. Kondratenko
__NOTE__ LVL here in original was moved two pages back. __NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.One of the tasks during the transition to communism is to educate a harmoniously developed individual. Aesthetic upbringing is called upon to play an exceptional role in this, since an aesthetic outlook, the goal of aesthetic education, is, by its very nature and essence, related to communism in the closest possible manner.
The all-round developed individual is one in whom all aspects are harmoniously developed to perfection---the intellectual, emontional, volitional, his psychical and spiritual strengths and creative abilities and talents.
The all-round development of the individual cannot be a purely internal one, only potentially inherent in man. It must be freely realised in practice, in social activity.
One of the basic conditions of such a development of the personality is the complete freedom of his creative manifestation and above all, as the, classics of Marxism showed, the freedom from want and outward expediency and the freedom from material incentive. ``In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production.... Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is the end in itself....''^^1^^
Does socialist society create the necessary conditions for this? Unquestionably all-round development of the individual ``...has been made possible by historic social gains---freedom from exploitation, unemployment and poverty, from discrimination on account of sex, origin, nationality or race. Every member of society is provided with equal opportunities for education and creative _-_-_
^^1^^ K. Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, Moscow, 1971, p. 820
207 labour. Relations of dependence and inequality between people in public affairs and family life disappear. The personal dignity of each citizen is protected by society. Each is guaranteed an equal and free choice of occupation and profession with due regard to the interests of society. As less and less time is spent on material production, the individual is afforded ever greater opportunities to develop his abilities, gifts, and talents in the fields of production, science, engineering, literature, and the arts."^^1^^These conditions, which have been created under socialism, are sufficient for beginning the process of the all-round, harmonious development of all and everyone but not, however, for the consummation of that process.
The Programme of the CPSU states that ``in the period of transition to communism, there are greater opportunities of educating a new man, who will harmoniously combine spiritual wealth, moral purity and a perfect physique."^^2^^ As we see, the Programme quite distinctly shows that ``the possibilities for educating a new man increase during the transitional period''.
The all-round development of the individual cannot, however, be a condition for the transition to communism. Firstly, where is the limit to this all-round development? If it is natural and definite for each individual it cannot exist for man in general. To establish any limit to the development of man's creative spiritual potential would mean to halt that development, to set up a certain boundary, beyond which mankind must either perish or turn backwards and begin to degrade. Secondly, to set such a task would mean to consider communism that point where the process of the all-round development of man would be complete. Karl Marx thought otherwise. He considered that it is not all-round developed individuals that are necessary for communism but rather that communism is necessary for the all-round development of all and everyone, that under communism the complete and free development of each individual does not end, but only begins,^^3^^ ``...that development of human energy which is the end in itself',^^4^^ the genuine history of the development of man as Man.
For the first time in history, in the period of the transition from socialism to communism, the task of harmoniously educating and developing man has actually been set realistically, and not speculatively.
_-_-_^^1^^ Programme of the CPSU, Moscow, 1961, pp. 109--10
~^^2^^Ibid., p. 109
^^3^^ See: K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1973, p. 127
^^4^^ K. Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, p. 820
208Communism means not only an abundance of the articles of consumption, not only a satisfaction of material needs. Abundance is not an end in itself for communism, but a necessary condition for the free labour and creativity of all and everyone, for the unimpeded manifestation of creative and constructive capabilities, and for self-revelation in creativity, which is a genuine human need.
The creative principle or ``creative instinct" of mankind is as powerful as hunger and thirst. It is inherent in all mentally sound people, though in varying degrees. The more talented the person, the stronger the creative impetus in him, the more irresistibly and impetuously he thirsts for the realisation and consummation of his capabilities. From here, strictly speaking, comes the prime task of upbringing, the forming and developing of creative capabilities, gifts and talents. However the scholars who limit the tasks of upbringing to this alone and reduce all its aspects and forms, including the aesthetic, to this are profoundly mistaken. Tjhey give the ``creative impetus" a ``disinterestedness'' which is not inherent in it claiming it to be free from ``essential needs" and selfdirected only towards beneficial ends, and this is in flagrant contradiction to the concrete facts of life.
The creative impetus in man is not only as powerful as hunger and thirst but also manifests itself if not together with physiological requirements then in any case with the first signs of consciousness. Everyone well knows the manifestations of the creative impetus in small children. And it can be directed not only towards beneficial ends, not only towards constructiveness, but also towards destruction, and can find outlet in mischief, rowdyism and criminal acts. How much inventiveness, creativity and even talent is sometimes displayed by criminals, how many creative abilities, gifts and brilliant talents have been wasted on money-grubbing, the destruction and subordination of other people.... Did creativity, the intentions of which were well aimed---the creation of genuine material and spiritual values for the benefit of the entire society, the whole of mankind---always have as its bases the motive of free self-manifestation, self-realisation, and not other, purely mercantile intentions, as, for example, the obtaining of material benefits or a thirst for glory and ambition?
In a society where material, social and political inequality existed or continues to exist, free, disinterested creativity, creativity as the self-realisation of capabilities is exclusive, the lot of outstanding gifts and talents.
In socialist society moral and political inequality has been eliminated, however a difference in the material and spiritual conditions of the life of certain members of society still exists as yet, __PRINTERS_P_209_COMMENT__ 8---121 209 and the principle of material incentive and payment according to labour remains; and this inevitably leads to the fact that creativity is far from always free of self-interest, ambition and utilitarian goals; and it happens that it can be directed to the detriment of society and can manifest itself in crime. Therefore to educate and develop the creative impetus in man and his capabilities and talents is important and necessary, but this is far from everything. The main task is to direct it in the proper channel, free it from petty mercantilism, and make it a disinterested, inner need.
No small role in solving this task lies in aesthetic education. However for concrete explanation of the role and significance of aesthetic education it is necessary to proceed not from the abstract notion of what a man ``will be" or ``won't be" in communist society but rather from what we should instil in man (in our presentday, socialist man) in order that he might become an active builder of communist society and a full-fledged citizen in it. And for that we have to examine where the essential difference of the second phase of communism from the first lies, what will be demanded of man under communism and what it will offer hirn, what is the nature of relations in such a society and on what principles and elements they are formed.
The division of labour amongst the classes in society, as a result of which the creative aspect of labour turned out to be in the hands of the bourgeoisie and under its direct control, led to the fact that the social function of labour as a means for the development and improvement of man actually proved to be reduced to zero. The socialist revolution, in liquidating the exploiting classes, thus eliminated the preferential right of any class whatsoever to engage in creative work or assume the leading role in all spheres of activity while retaining, however, the division of labour along historically formed lines. In the transition to communism many of them will probably be altered and others will die off completely (for example the protection of social and personal property), but they are not subject to destruction.
It may be presumed that in communist society, like in socialist, the specialisation of labour,i.e., its division by professions among members of society, will be retained; it would be naive utopianism to assume the possibility (in any remote perspective) of such ``universal'' development of man that he could with equal success work and be creative in any and every sphere of activity, in any occupation, even with our modern development of science and technology, not to speak of the development they will achieve under communism.
In order to understand namely what remaining elements of the 210 division of labour we must eliminate in the transition from socialism to communism it is necessary to compare the role of work in the life of people in a socialist society with the role that work will play in the life of people under communism.
In socialist society work for the benefit of society is the sacred obligation of every person. In communist society it has to become the prime necessity of life. The attitude towards work in socialist society is based on moral and economic compulsion ``he who doesn't work, neither shall he eat''. The attitude towards work in communist society must be based on the free manifestation of an inner need. The basic individual (personal) motive to work and concern about the quality and quantity of its results in socialist society is material and moral incentive: ``from each according to his ability, to each according to his work''. In communist society (``from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs''), in place of the no longer needed material incentive, aesthetic incentive in the results of labour---the striving for a more complete realisation of creative possibilities and talents---becomes the basic motive.
Such a comparison is sufficient in order to see that it is a question of two diverse functions of labour: when we speak of socialism we take labour as a necessary condition for supporting the life of the individual person and society, as a means of existence, i.e., we regard it as an external need; when we speak of communism, then we take labour as a means for the ``distinctive and free development of the individual'', i.e., we characterise it as man's internal need;
But there is another way of reasoning which, in my view, must proceed from the fact that labour, notwithstanding its dual nature, is a single entity. No matter how paradoxical it may seem, its unity is contained in its duality. The possibility of the division of labour was objectively dependent on labour's dual nature in which the objective possibility of its unification is also contained. And if it is impossible to do without labour as a means of existence then it is necessary to subordinate it to labour as a means of development and improvement, uniting them on a higher basis. Labour as a means of existence, being an external and not internal need, appears as the realm of necessity. But from here it still does not follow that labour as an inner need, as a means of free development, cannot create the means for existence, cannot be beneficial in its results.
The free development of the individual, or the development of human energies, which is the end in itself, can be realised only through labour. Labour is the basic and, in fact, the only means of 211 the social development of man; such a development is not possible outside of labour, if by labour we understand not only work or a job, but any of man's activities (including games, if they are not for amusement during rest) demanding expenditures of not only physical, but also mental energy. Labour as a means of selfdevelopment is always directed towards the individual and not outside, therefore not all such labour is productive and effective, i.e., beneficial to society. But it would not be rignt to think that such work must always be non-productive and ineffective.
The essence of the division of labour lies in the fact that in labour's being denied its creativity, it was reduced to work or a job, i.e., to a ``bare'' means of existence which is not only not conducive to free development but rather impedes it. Therefore any activity Of man (any labour) directed to free development came to be interpreted as something incompatible with productive labour, the opposite of work. However man can really develop only through creativity, only in displaying in practice his creative abilities in producing material and spiritual values. Inner motives and stimuli also attract him to this: the desire for self-realisation, the desire to see what he is capable of through performing activities and actions which alone are capable of giving him true satisfaction and pleasure. Being by nature an active and functioning creature man feels the need of active self-expression much more strongly than that of a passive accumulation of knowledge and development of capabilities.
Thus the free development of the personality is not in irreconcilable contradiction to the creation of material and spiritual values, to the production of consumer products---the creation of the means of existence. It is in contradiction to thoughtless, mechanical, non-creative labour. In order to eliminate the existing contradictions between free development and material production it is necessary to annul the division of labour, to return labour the unity it has lost and man the universal character of activity. Strictly speaking the word ``return'' is not precise because that unity in question never existed before in the history of man.
We observe the unity of labour, in which both its functions are indissolubly fused, only in the early stages of man's development when work was not as yet divided either into definite work processes or into various spheres of production. Here the basis of the unity of labour lay in external need---the obtaining of the means of existence. The second function of labour---the development and improvement of man---followed from the first: in making and improving the implements of labour with the aim of simplifying it and raising its productivity, and in improving the organisation of 212 the work processes man broadened his cognitive capabilities developed physically, tempered his will, and improved the social organisation of the labour collective.
In the higher stage of the development of man the unity of labour must be achieved in the exact opposite manner: by engaging in creative labour, which is an inner need, the basic means for free development, man, in this way, will penetrate more deeply into the secrets of nature, conquer the Universe and make and improve the implements and means of production for utilising more broadly the inexhaustible riches of nature, for satisfying his growing needs Such labour, being ``non-beneficial'' in its goal---the goal of the free development and creative self-realisation of man for the sake of satisfaction and pleasure---will at the same time be to the highest degree beneficial and productive in its results.
I foresee that only by means of achieving such a unity of labour can the ``realm of necessity" be eliminated and the real possibility be created for the free development of all and everyone, the result and condition of which is the creating of an abundance of items of material and spiritual consumption. The practical realisation of this task will signify the transition from socialism to communism, the building of a communist society.
[213] __ALPHA_LVL2__ AESTHETIC EDUCATION AND CONTEMPORANEITYN. Kiyashchenko
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.Like any social phenomenon arising out of the requirements of social development, aesthetic education does not remain constant in its content, aims, functions and methods. It is developed, perfected, and extended in conjunction with the changes in the people's way of life, the accumulation of mankind's spiritual wealth, the broadening of the sphere of man's activities, and the expanding of the means of aesthetic influence.
The modern ideas about aesthetic education and its theory and practice in the USSR reflect the needs and possibilities of a developed socialist society and the process of full-scale construction of communism in this country. If the task of giving the vast masses of the people access to the knowledge and spiritual values created by mankind and earlier inaccessible to them stood before the Communist Party, the Soviet government, and before the entire country immediately after the victory of the October Revolution, then in the 1920's and 1930's aesthetic education concentrated all its attention on teaching people how to ``associate'' with art and on inducing them to come to love art, to be attracted to it, and to become spiritually and emotionally enriched by this association. The requirements of the social development of that period pushed this task into the foreground.
In the Status of the Unified School of October 16, 1918, in the Party Programme, adopted by the 8th Party Congress in 1919, and in the activities of the People's Commissariat for Education all attention was focused on artistic or aesthetic education by means of an art capable of inspiring people to participate in the cause of communist construction and captivating them with communist ideals and true humanism and humaneness. The decision of the 8th Congress of the RCP (B) emphasised: ``There are no forms of science and art which are not linked with the great ideas of 214 communism and the infinitely varied work in setting up a communist economy."^^1^^ The Status of the Unified School directed the Soviet educational system, then in its formative stage, to a systematic development of the perceptive and creative abilities in children through the means of art; they were to be given the opportunity of deriving pleasure out of beauty and of creating it. Aesthetic Education in the Unified School, a document of the People's Commissariat for Education specifying the position of the Status, interpreted aesthetic education in an equally original manner.
Did the possibility exist then of interpreting more broadly and comprehensively the essence of aesthetic education and of examining its aims and functions in accordance with-this? The theoretical elaboration of these problems in the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism dealing with methodological questions of aesthetic research and the functioning of art in society laid the foundation for a broader approach to aesthetic education. However in actual reality conditions had not yet matured in order that such factors as free creative labour, nature (genuine and that created by man), the realm of moral relations and social and political life, the' process of cognition and acquiring knowledge, mode of life and others could be used as means of influencing man aesthetically, that is in the practice of aesthetic education. Many of these factors, particularly work and the realm of moral relations, had lost their aesthetic meaning under capitalism.
In the difficult and lengthy process of socialist construction it was necessary to restore many aspects of the life and activity of people in their aesthetic ``rights'' and return them their emotional and sensuous attractiveness, infectiousness and effectiveness so as to utilise them in the practice of aesthetic educational work. It was in this very process that socialist realist art was formed, the communist artistic and aesthetic impact of which is considerably higher than the artistic and aesthetic values created in past ages. Furthermore, as the level of education and culture of Soviet people rose their spiritual needs increased, the attitude to art and the understanding of its spiritual significance changed, and feelings facilitating the development of the ability to experience emotionally and to take delight in something were cultivated and shaped.
Right up to the 1%0's Marxist-Leninist aesthetics was interpreted as a general theory of art, and by aesthetic education _-_-_
^^1^^ The CPSU in the Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the CC, Vol. 1, M., 1953, p. 451 (in Russian)
215 aestheticians and pedagogues understood a purposeful process which formed the ability to feel, understand and evaluate the beautiful in art and the ability to participate, within capabilities, in creating artistic values.The completion of the construction of socialism and our country's entering into the period of creating a communist society, as well as modern scientific and technological progress have considerably broadened the sphere of the aesthetic relations and aesthetic activities of Soviet people and have enriched the means of aesthetic influence on man. This inevitably led to a revision of the ideas about aesthetics and its subject and about the theory and practice of aesthetic education.
Which objective processes and conditions of developed socialist society summoned a revision of the ideas concerning aesthetics and aesthetic education?
. Firstly, the aesthetic content of free labour as the most important means of moulding and perfecting man was revealed by the very fact of making all the tools and means of production as well as all the wealth created by the people social property, by the socialist principle of the distribution of all the material and spiritual wealth produced under socialism, and by the very process of socialist construction. Under developed socialism labour turns into a powerful means of aesthetic education. Man's prime requirements in life and his intellectual and physical power are realised in it. Emancipated socialist, and now communist labour attains ever greater emotional effectiveness and fills man with feelings of joy, pleasure, creative inspiration and satisfaction. Not by chance has the man of labour become the main hero in socialist realist art.
Secondly, developed socialism restored the true aesthetic and educational significance of nature by making it social property, the object of national care and universal study and by rationally utilising its resources. Developed socialism, for the first time in history, placed on a scientific basis the question of a rational and considerate attitude to nature by man and of the harmonious concord of natural and so-called man-made nature. In this process the attitude of each individual to nature becomes more and more aesthetic, insofar as nature exerts more and more influence on his emotions and feelings. Aesthetic education, which develops man's ability to perceive, experience arid comprehend the beauty of nature and to take pleasure in it, and which uses this advantage of socialism in man's inter-relations with nature, increases its social functions, enriching each member of society spiritually, morally, and psychologically.
Thirdly, the growth of the well-being of the entire people is of no 216 small importance to the broadening of the functions of aesthetic education and its increased influence in developed socialist society. Under socialism tjie creating of ``conditions favourable for the allround development of the abilities and creative activity of Soviet people, of all working people,"^^1^^ becomes a reality. Behind this is hidden a different attitude to things and material goods than that of bourgeois society, a different culture of material consumption. In such an approach to things new possibilities emerge for revealing their aesthetic meaning and for their improvement. 1975 and the 10th Five-Year Plan were declared years for improving the quality and efficiency of production in the USSR. Technical aesthetics and aesthetics of labour in our day have demonstrated that the modern understanding of the quality of the material values produced is inseparably linked with their aesthetic perfection (of course not only their outward and decorative but their inner, constructive, and functional perfection as well).
Fourthly, the equal right of all citizens of socialist society to utilise all the achievements of the intellect of humanity bearing the ideas of progress, humanism, and spiritual perfection is the essential basis for the more complete and all-round aesthetic education of each citizen. The October Revolution made spiritual values the property of the entire people, however, time was needed in order that they could become genuinely accessible to them in all their richness and pithiness and in order that the people might utilise them in their struggle for the victory of communist ideals. Now that time has come, insofar as.the USSR has become not only the first country with complete literacy but also the first social system in the world to introduce a compulsory secondary education, a country where each individual enjoys all the possibilities for mastering the whole store of knowledge and spiritual values acquired by mankind. Almost all our people have developed a need for constant and systematic ``association'' with art and nature, a craving for the creative transformation of the world and active participation in creating artistic and aesthetic values (in reading, going to the theatre and cinema, etc. the Soviet people are of the most active in the world).
And the very process of acquiring knowledge (the sphere of scientific research) and passing it on to the younger generation (the sphere of public education) has, under developed socialism, become an effective means for the aesthetic development of man. This cannot but inspire intensive work in the field of aesthetic science and the theory of aesthetic education.
_-_-_^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 51
217Yet another important factor that has given rise to a change in the theory and practice of aesthetic education is the aesthetic significance of the social and political activities of many millions of Soviet people. It is well-known that already Plato had drawn attention to this means for the aesthetic development of man. However in his time social and political activity was the lot of the chosen few, who made up an insignificant section of society. In developed socialism millions of people of the most varied professions and occupations participate in government, in guiding the national economy, in spiritual production, and in the distribution of material and spiritual benefits. With each year Soviet socialist democracy is widening the sphere of application of the civic valour and social enthusiasm of man.
The sphere of the international relations of the Soviet Union and the other countries of the socialist community has, under developed socialism, acquired greater aesthetic, emotional and effective strength, conducive to the mutual enrichment of all peoples and each man through emotional experience, and a uniqueness of artistic language, character, and way of life borrowed from each other.
Communist morality, imbued with true humanism, a widespread culture of contacts with people, a depth, purity and emotional pithiness of intimate relations, and a sympathy for, attention to and respect for each other resounded in full, aesthetic force. These morals also organically fused good and beauty and a loftiness of feelings and emotional experiences with the habjts of behaviour, deeds, and activities of man. Art and morals attained a harmony and mutually enriched each other in socialist realist art. And this means that communist morality now has, in art, a powerful ally in their growing influence on man.
In other words, the entire way of life of Soviet people has undergone an essential aesthetic reorganisation during the past decades. This has engendered a broader and more profoundly serious approach to understanding the essence, aims and functions of aesthetic education, an approach organically linked with the historical demands of social development.
At the present time aesthetic education presupposes a purposeful process which shapes the ability to perceive, experience, comprehend and evaluate the beautiful and the ugly, the lofty and the base, the tragic and the comic, the heroic and the anti-heroic in the phenomena of reality surrounding man, in human activities, in people's relations, and in art; that purposeful process which develops the aesthetic ability to create according to the laws of beauty in all spheres and forms of human activities, the habit of 218 showing one's worth as an aesthetic, creative personality in every deed and action, and of helping to resist and oppose alien and harmful aesthetic and ideological influences and views.
In its specifics artistic education is seen at the same time as a process, through the means of art, of purposeful influence aimed at forming in those being educated artistic perception and taste, a love of art, an understanding of it, an ability to derive pleasure from it and, when possible, to participate in creating artistic values.
In artistic education man's feelings and abilities are shaped by art and for art, for a purely artistic consumption of art itself. In aesthetic education art is used for shaping those features and qualities of the human personality which are revealed in the broad context of its activities according to the laws of beauty. The extent and depth in which art is used are different in artistic and aesthetic education. In the course of artistic education art's influence on man is limited to the problems of art itself and the artistic development of humanity. In the process of aesthetic education art influences the entire way of life, all spheres of the activity and creativity of the people of today. Art participates in the aesthetic development of mankind---in its material, social and political, cognitive and cultural, moral and ethical creativity.
Such purposefulness of aesthetic education also determines the range of its tasks, the fulfilment of which helps to shape such a personality as would answer all the requirements of the life of developed socialism and the prospects of its development into communism, and the demands set by the modern scientific and technological revolution and the social and aesthetic ideal of communism.
Aesthetic education begins from the fact that in every individual a certain reserve of impressions, perceptions and images containing aesthetic information is created under the influence of various aesthetically meaningful objects and phenomena. An aesthetic sense, taste, and aesthetic emotional reactions are later formed on the basis of this reserve. If in all other forms of man's education and development everything begins with a mastering of conceptually registered knowledge and elementary information, then the aesthetic knowledge and aesthetic experience accumulated by all the preceding generations of people is passed on to the new generations in the first place with the help of the various objects that surround them and constitute the background and atmosphere of their existence. If that background and atmosphere are made up of objects on and in which the most modern ideas of the harmony of colours, sounds and plastic movements are impressed and embodied, then this aesthetic 219 experience is fixed in man's consciousness in the form of various impressions and definite emotional states and moods.
It is quite evident that the process of creating a reserve of aesthetic knowledge does not end at the level of contemplation and emotional and sensuous experiences, nor does it develop into a purely rational cognition and an acquisition of knowledge. Aesthetic information itself is such that it demands an organic interlacing of the emotional and sensuous, and rational levels of reflection. The development of man's emotional and sensuous realm leaves its imprint on the process of the rational assimilation of knowledge. The same can also be observed in aesthetic information itself---the higher the level of emotional embodiment of rational aesthetic knowledge in the object and phenomenon, work of art or product of material production, the more significant is its influence on the individual. All this is important for the aesthetic education of any person, but acquires especial significance in the aesthetic education of the younger generation.
In the Soviet Union, thanks to the extensive development of the various branches of industry and trade, the entire system of family and pre-school public education creates such an atmosphere in everyday life, which provides for the creating of a rich reserve of diverse, vividly remembered and emotionally effective impressions. This same atmosphere opens up before children the possibilities for the most diverse pursuits, always interesting, lively and active, developing the active side of the child's personality. At the present time, according to statistics, the absolute majority of Soviet children pass through the public education system in children's creches-kindergartens.
The entire atmosphere and background of the activities of schools, out-of-school children's establishments, vocational schools, secondary specialised schools, institutes, and the whole network of cultural-educational facilities for Soviet people also serve in realising this task.
It must not be forgotten that in the Soviet system of public education (in each of its links) the acquiring of aesthetic knowledge is effected by teaching a series of humanitarian subjects which systematise the person's knowledge of the history of the aesthetic and artistic development of humanity. Parallel with this is a special aesthetic and artistic education connected with the training of specialists for various branches of aesthetic and artistic activity.
At the present time aestheticians, pedagogues and psychologists in the USSR are discussing the question of how to aestheticise the 220 entire process of teaching and educating Soviet man and not only its separate links. This appears to be a very promising way of enriching the theory and practice of aesthetic education and heightening its social role.
Current Soviet aesthetics considers its essential task in the sphere of aesthetic education to be the forming on the basis of acquired knowledge of such social and psychological qualities of the personality as would provide it with the possibility of emotionally evaluating genuine aesthetic objects and phenomena. Man's aesthetic emotions, in the broad sense of the word, are not simple sensuous reactions of the organism to certain irritants; an evaluative attitude to the objects perceived based on formed conceptions about beauty and perfection are necessarily present in them.
The forming of man's emotional realm is, perhaps, one of the most capital and complicated tasks of aesthetic education.
The difficulty in fulfilling this task is intensified by the fact that in aesthetic emotion (as distinct from others of man's emotional reactions) the feeling and the intellect are organically interwoven. Aesthetic emotion is a dialectical unity of emotional experience and cognition. Aesthetic emotional reaction, like the reaction of evaluation, like an emotional response to something necessarily presupposes such an evaluative level as would determine the degree of development of not only the processes and organs of sensuous cognition but also the intellect, realm of demands, motives, and the individual's entire personality. Moreover, evaluation always takes into account the purposeful development of the individual.
The characteristic teature of aesthetic emotional attitude consists of the fact that by being summoned by a definite object or phenomenon, it is transferred to other objects and phenomena in man's environment. Aesthetic information and the aesthetic emotional state indirectly influence forms of man's activity remote from it in content. A transference of experience, its generalisation and an enriching of the reserve of associations take place. This is precisely why the instilling of emotional receptivity and emotional responsiveness is a guaranteed way of shaping the all-round and harmonious development of the personality.
In emotional aesthetic reactions and states such purely human qualities as dissatisfaction with that achieved and a constant striving for the new and the unknown are also expressed. V.I.Lenin noted that ``there has never been, nor can there be, any human search for truth without 'human emotions' ''.^^1^^ Without emotional _-_-_
~^^1^^V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 260
221 reflection man is not capable of comprehending the subjective consequences of everything taking place in the world and evaluating the significance of his own actions for those around him. The role of man's emotional dimension is particularly great in an age of headlong scientific and technological progress and of the huge scale of man's influence on the surrounding world and that of the technology created by him on his own life.Through emotional reactions and experiences the individual becomes involved in social life, in connection with which the Soviet philosopher Vigotsky called aesthetic emotions the tool by which intimate sides of the personality are drawn into the range of social life. A harmonious merging of the individual with the social is achieved in aesthetic emotion.
The setting up of a certain reserve of aesthetic knowledge and forming of a realm of aesthetic emotions, feelings, tastes, views and convictions do not mean that the process of the aesthetic development of the personality has been completed. All this provides the personality merely with the possibility of comprehending, feeling and experiencing aesthetically meaningful objects and phenomena and deriving aesthetic pleasure from their contemplation. However from the Marxist point of view the main thing in the aesthetic development of the personality is the forming and developing of such qualities and such abilities as would turn it into an active creator of the beautiful and allow it not only to derive pleasure from the beauty of the world but also to transform the world according to the laws of beauty.
The question here is not of the ability to discover oneself only in artistic creativity but of the capacity for being aesthetically creative in any form of human activity. Of course the developing of the aesthetic capabilities of the individual was desirable for the process of aesthetic education at all stages of the development of society, however today the fulfilment of this task through aesthetic education has grown into a requirement of the times, inasmuch as society has attained such a level of development where the further improving of the life and activities of all the people must be realised in accordance with the laws of beauty.
Therefore aesthetic education not only draws into the stores of its means an ever-widening circle of objects and phenomena, but also creates these objects and phenomena through the activities of aesthetically developed people. This is aided by the fact that aesthetic creative ability, in accordance with modern psychology, is such a combination of the personality's mental features and qualities as provides it with the possibility of attaining success in all 222 forms and spheres of human activity, particularly in producing perfect, harmonious, refined, plastic objects satisfying not only the utilitarian and material, but also the spiritual needs of people. Aesthetic creative ability is a general or generalised, and not a specific ability. The forming of this ability in an individual takes place simultaneously in the process of labour, moral and other forms of education.
Throughout the entire process of man's aesthetic development such aesthetic feelings, tastes and views must be formed on the basis of which the aesthetic sphere of his world outlook is strengthened and becomes an integral element of his inner culture, his spiritual wealth, and his ideological position. Under these conditions man becomes capable of giving a correct emotional, sensuous and intellectual evaluation of any phenomenon of reality and art, including those which express feelings, ideas and ideals contradicting humanism and the interests of man's progressive development and which draw him into moral degradation and spiritual impoverishment.
Aesthetic education plays a special role in the process of the allround development of the personality. Firstly, it is precisely in this form of education that man's varied feelings and his mind are developed and the realm of his emotional life, intellect, and harmony of mind and heart are formed in an organic merging and unity.
Secondly, aesthetic education promotes.an all-round development of these basic aspects of man's inner life, since its final goal is the discovering of all the inclinations and talents of those being educated and the creating of conditions for forming on their basis the ability for active transformative endeavour in accordance with . the aesthetic demands of the times. Thirdly, the developing of the ability to use one's imagination productively and creatively, to develop a creative mind, and to think in associations, as well as the acquiring of the knowledge, skills and habits formed by other aspects of a communist education provides the personality with the possibility of actively participating in the many-sided activity of society in a many-sided manner.
Fourthly, insofar as all aspects of the multiform life of people are drawn into the sphere of the modern aesthetic life of developed socialist society and consequently into the sphere of aesthetic education, such education is the correct path to the harmonious development of the individual---physical, mental, social, moral, and spiritual.
Fifthly, during the process of the all-round aesthetic development of the individual a harmony of his relations with society is 223 attained---the personal and the civic and the individual and the collective merge as society progresses towards attainment of the communist social and aesthetic ideal.
Such an approach to aesthetic education and such an understanding of it correspond to the spirit and demands of the current stage in the development of socialist society.
[224] __ALPHA_LVL2__ NATURE AND CHILDRENK. Kanayeva
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.If it is true that everything begins with childhood and that our childhood is so firmly implanted in us that even when we grow up we remain,' without really knowing it, under the influence of experience, whether we recognise it as such or not, accumulated some time in the past, then the theme of these notes (or article) will not seem unimportant. After all, the individual's ability to reflect, for which lie is conditioned by his ``human'' origin, is also shaped and continuously ``in the making''. And for all the importance of education and the assimilation of the social experience in the process of ``nature developing into man'',^^1^^ it is child's `` spontaneous" association with nature which teaches him the first lessons of good and beauty that will shape his personality. A developed, that is, a truly human and cultured ability to feel and to perceive is the product of a complex interaction of a child's outward (practical) and inner (psychic) activity in which nature holds a place entirely its own. Nature, for a child, is not only and not simply the primary and irreplaceable source of emotional experience, but also it serves as his first ``practical'' schooling for transforming the material into the ideal.
The question is how seriously is this self-evident circumstance treated by ``adult'' science and the practice of public education? And what happens when grownups try to ``raise'' the child to their own, adult awareness and understanding of nature? It is this which the present article intends to examine.
I do not suppose there are any parents or grandparents in the world who do not wish their child, or grandchild, to be sensitive to _-_-_
^^1^^ K. Marx and K. Engels, Collected Works. Vol. 3, Moscow, 1975. p. 304
225 beauty, kindness and fairness. Everybody wants his child to have inner richness and outward beauty, to have a perceptive understanding of people, to know much and to be able to experience profound emotions. In modern conditions, more than ever before, nature plays (it should play!) an enormous role in cultivating spiritual wealth and a high culture of feelings in the personality. Teaching a child to perceive nature poetically, to love nature, is a noble task, because only love engenders trust, reciprocal feeling, and understanding. One must not forget that apart from everything else, a love for one's native countryside engenders a love for one's country too.Ah, nature! An eternal, guileless and disinterested friend! All it asks is attention, and it gives one so much in return! I do not think I'll be doing an injustice to either parents or teachers if I say that it is very difficult for them to compete with nature in the power of the impact it has on children for such is the affinity between them. A child's relations with nature are always intimate and deeply personal.
It may be assumed that everyone will agree with this. The ``trouble'' begins when grownups, ignoring the peculiarities of a child's psychology, try to pull the child up to their own level of thinking (of course with the best of intentions), whereas it is the grownups themselves who should ``elevate themselves" to the child's attitude to nature.
Nature and children are equally naive, unsophisticated and open-hearted. A grownup will say: ``That's a beautiful tree'', or: ``Look at all that timber going to waste!'', as a character in a modern novel said when he saw the wonderful Byelovezhskaya forest. A child would never say anything like that. His view of nature is not blocked by any practical, considerations or interests. His attitude is disinterested, and disinterestedness, as everyone knows, is the essential virtue of aesthetic perception as such.
For another thing, a child's thinking is always associative; he thinks in comparisons, in images that are often so fanciful and unexpected that grownups, alas, fail to understand them.
Nature is material: you can see it, touch it, and even taste it. To a child it can give the world, provided it is spoken of in simple words and images capable of evoking an almost physical sensation. Mikhail Prishvin, a great nature lover, used to say that a feeling for nature was a personal, subjective feeling: ``I am nature''. In a child, this feeling is very strongly developed. Such abstract concepts as ``beautiful'', ``splendid'' and so forth mean little to him. Later, in his school years, he will perceive these concepts consciously and naturally. But in the meantime, he has to go through a complex 226 phase of purely figurative perception, without which the most concise concepts and words will never be anything but anaemic abstractions, leaving him completely cold.
Far be it for me to advocate absence of thought in the upbringing of children. Children are always inquisitive, so much so that adults sometimes actually envy their unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Their most favourite word is ``why''. They ask their endless questions from morning till night, expecting and demanding an answer. Remember Rudyard Kipling's verse?
``I keep six honest serving-men
~ ~ ~ ~ (They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
~ ~ ~ ~ And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea.
~ ~ ~ ~ I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me
~ ~ ~ ~ I give them all a rest.
~ ~ But different folk hold different views;
~ ~ ~ ~ I know a person small---
She keeps ten million serving-men,
~ ~ ~ ~ Who get no rest at all!
She sends 'em abroad on her own affairs,
~ ~ ~ ~ From the second she opens her eyes---
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
~ ~ ~ ~ And seven million Whys.''
When answering their questions, we must remember how a child's mind works. Here is an example of a wise approach to a child.
The writer Mikhail Prishvin tells us this story.
``In the forest I met a little girl, the daughter of a woodsman, and asked her:
``\thinspace`Are there any mushrooms?'
``\thinspace`Yes, some.'
``\thinspace`Any white mushrooms?'
``\thinspace`White mushrooms too, only it's getting cold and they're moving under the fir trees. Don't bother to look for them under the birches, they're all hiding under the firs.'
``\thinspace`But how could they move to another place, have you ever seen a mushroom walk?'
``The little girl was momentarily at a loss, but suddenly she understood me and, making a puckish face, replied:
227``\thinspace`They walk at night, of course, so how could you see them in the dark? No one has ever seen it.'\thinspace"^^1^^
__*_*_*__They are talking, you will note, in all seriousness. The grownup does not use baby talk, and shows a genuine interest in the girl's story. With his question, worded tactfully so as not to shatter the peculiar psychology of a child, he brings an element of reality into the girl's fairy-tale world, inviting her to stop and think. Children are quick, and they are grateful to us when we take them seriously and treat them as equals.
1 once overheard a conversation like this on the beach at a Black Sea resort. A little boy had gathered some pebbles in his toy bucket, and taking them out one by one he told their ``story''. ``This one is Gagarin's pebble, this is his orbit round the earth (it was a round, black pebble with a white line around it).... And this one is Herman Titov's (he held up a nicely polished grey spar, slightly flattened at the poles and encircled with many white lines).... This one here is Vaska the tiger cub (he picked up a brick pebble with black stripes)....''
A man lay on the beach beside the boy. He was watching the dolphins play, admiring the swiftness with which they dove in and out of the waves, and saying: ``Many legends are told about dolphins. They are even called 'sea people', you know. They rescue shipwrecked sailors, they talk in a language all their own, they let children ride on their backs, and when they hear a friend calling for help, they hurry to his rescue.... They also say that if people could learn to understand the language of dolphins they'd find out many secrets about the ocean deep, about sea monsters, and other things which are still mysteries to us but which we've got to learn about. Dolphins can also help us to catch tish....'' The boy listened spellbound.
The next morning he brought his new grownup friend a picture he had painted called ``The Sea''. There was everything in it--- dolphins, rays, and sea monsters of the most fantastic shapes. It was not merely a token of gratitude, it was the boy's response.
Grownups communicate their experience of associating with nature through the most varied media---a chemical formula, a poem, a painting, a technical invention. Children, too, do more than simply contemplate nature, they also feel their way along for _-_-_
^^1^^ M. Prishvin. Collected Works in 6 volumes. Vol. 5, Moscow, 1957. p. 287 (in Russian)
228 closer contact with it and find their own ``formulas'' to express the feelings, thoughts and images it has evoked. A child's delight in the amazing gifts and secrets of nature is a joyous discovery of a new world. He marvels at the cleverness with which everything has been arranged in nature, and begins to ponder over its ``secrets''. Finding the answer is a creative process, arousing a desire to copy nature.As a rule, children do not simply repeat or copy things. They create their own. In any construction---a sand castle or an edifice erected from building blocks---you can always see that the child's imagination has been at work, complementing what he has seen in the surrounding world with his own personal predilections. Of course, the shaping of personality is a long and difficult road which a child will have to traverse before he can choose a profession after his own heart and begin to understand other people. But the early seeds of his interests, of his human qualities, ripen here, on the threshold of life, shall we say. And, perhaps, the most important thing is for us to learn how to discern the child's nascent vocation in his purely aesthetic, naive emotions and fantasies, and arouse in him a desire to act, create, and invent, to see what he can do. We must make the child see the connection between the water lily and a pontoon bridge devised and made by man, and the connection between the pattern designed by a textiles artist and the verdurous carpeting of the earth.
Art can be a great help. We often and readily take our children to the cinema and the theatre, and read books aloud for them. But you will rarely see children at art exhibitions. Apparently the parents are afraid that their kids will not appreciate the paintings they see. They should not be. Is not drawing all but the main occupation of children from infancy? Is not the sense of colour the most popular aesthetic experience which children are capable of knowing? Discussing the painting before you, or talking about it afterwards at home, can do more good than dozens of general discourses on the ``beauty of nature''.
After viewing the Moscow Exhibition of Children's Drawings, keynoted ``My Country Is My Home'', people wrote and said: ``Children, yours is a beautiful world. I visited it, and it was like being in paradise. Please, take me along with you!" ``Thank heaven there are child-artists, otherwise there would be no adult-artists.'' ``A good example for grownups to follow: here everyone expresses himself freely, the children do not imitate anyone, they draw as they feel, without prompting.'' ``There are no clich\'es. No desire to stun or impress the viewer. A total absence of bleak, drab grey colours. Nothing is contrived. They have a knack for seeing 229 and understanding the forms of nature, of things.'' And more to the same effect.
There was a picture called The Lion And His Trainer, painted by a boy of 11 from Hungary. The trainer, whip in hand, stands before the cage, and behind the bars is the lion---a clever, sly, and very, very ginger lion. And he seems to be saying: ``Look at him, he thinks he has tamed me. It's the cage that keeps me here, and you and 1 know it. He's a fool, that tamer!" Then, there was a picture called A Cow Herd by a Soviet girl of 7. It's a great parade of cows of the most extraordinary colours and different facial expressions. 1 repeat, ``facial expressions'', because I can't help wanting to call every cow here a ``personality''. One of them glares at you threateningly, another has a freckled nose, an impish twinkle in her eyes, and a coquettishly twisted horn; there is one cow that seems to be nursing a grievance, and another one who seems too lazy to care. There is a veritable riot of colours---mauve, red, pink, orange.... Children seem to paint with nature's own juices and colours. There is no naturalism in their pictures because they are alive with sincere feeling, with a faith so infectious that no one can be left indifferent to it. What captivates us is the children's disinterestedness---that ``strange'' thing without which there can be no real kindness, no real art. Brains and talent without this virtue lose their infectious quality. Is it not symptomatic that a child's acquaintance with the surrounding world and his upbringing begins with fairy tales where objects and animals are humanised and very often behave contrary to all scientific concepts? It is as natural as the Ancient Greeks' self-expression in mythology, an art which never ceases to amaze us, people living in the atomic and cybernetics age. A grownup cannot turn into a child again, childishness does not suit him. ``But does he not delight in the naivet\'e of a child, and does he not himself have to strive to reproduce, at a higher stage, his own true substance."^^1^^ In ``exposing'' the fairy tale, grownups lose their freedom of selfexpression and fall prey to utilitarianism which begins to prevail over emotions. Envying children, they strive to recapture not only their spontaneity but also, and most important, their uninhibited sensations.
A child takes his first lessons in morality from associating with nature. He does not yet know the concepts of ``good'' and ``evil'', but he already humanises nature, endowing it with purely human qualities. There are good and bad things in nature; some he loves and others he dislikes. There is no direct link, of course, between _-_-_
^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels on Art, Vol. 1, M., 1967, p. 121 (in Russian)
230 respecting nature and respecting people, but an indirect link there certainly is. Nature, like people, can either be respected or not. Respect for nature means an ability to feel and not disturb its rhythm, to hear the magic world of sounds in the forest or the steppe. The working man has carried this respect through the centuries. In his remarkable book Recollections of Rocks, Academician A. Fersman speaks of the amazing subtlety of a miner's observations: ``Over the long years his eyes became accustomed to those barely perceptible combinations of colour, shape, pattern and glitter that cannot be described, painted or put into words, but which for the miner were inviolable laws of nature.''It is this ``inviolable'' respect for the laws of nature that we must cultivate in our children. Let a person go through life with the aesthetic impressions of his childhood---the rapture evoked in him by a sunset or sunrise, the tranquility of spirit brought on by a moonlit night, the delight of listening to the chirping of birds. It will be a help to him in living and working.
``I remember,'' writes M. Prishvin, ``when I was a young man I once found a very, very white birch tree framed in gold, and it was so tall that I had to crane my neck to see its golden crown high up in the blue, and it was so beautiful that I didn't notice that my hat fell off and I walked hohie from the forest without it.
``Today is a day like that one, and I wandered about the forest as enraptured as then, and found a birch tree that was just as beautiful, and my hat fell off again, and I felt just as young, but only one tiny little thing was different: my hat did fall off, but now, in my advanced years, I did not leave it behind in the forest."^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ M. Prishvin, Collected Works in 6 volumes, Vol. 6, Moscow, 1957, p. 497 (in Russian)
[231] __ALPHA_LVL2__ TASTE AS THE AESTHETIC REFLECTION OF REALITY,V. Skatcrshchikov
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.By its very nature aesthetic taste appears in the role of a regulator of man's aesthetic activity and aesthetic perception of the world. The aesthetic relation of society and the individual to concrete natural and social phenomena and to the fruits of aesthetic activity is embodied in it and is given by it either a positive or negative evaluation. True, the mechanism of taste is not the only mechanism of aesthetic evaluation, however it is highly important and essential. Its function in the system of aesthetic consciousness has many different imports. Taste, so to say, appears both as a means of reflecting the aesthetic merit of the most varied objects of reality, as the embodiment of man's aesthetic attitude to these objects in a directly emotional form, and as the criterion of the perfection or imperfection of activities transforming the world in accordance with the laws of beauty.
The complexity of the structure of taste, the multitude of its social functions, and the diversity of factors determining its existence and effects were reasons why aesthetics was rather late in coming to analyse this phenomenon. Interest in elaborating the theory of taste was revived in bourgeois aesthetics in the second half of the 19th century and is an object of acute ideological struggle at the present time. A theoretical analysis of taste based on a strictly scientific understanding of the essence of aesthetic assimilation of the world and on consistent dialectical materialistic grounds is being developed only in Marxist aesthetics.
The judgement of taste contains an evaluation of various beautiful or ugly, harmonious or disharmonious, perfect or imperfect objects and phenomena. Taste represents a stable system of aesthetic likings and concretely defines and ``deciphers'' aesthetic requirements. In encountering unfamiliar phenomena, man uses his tastes as a criterion of aesthetic evaluation in the 232 form, as it were, of the spontaneously arising judgement ``I like it---I don't like it'', expressed in a direct emotional response. In addition this judgement of taste can pertain not only to definite things and objects but also to their aggregate and to their varieties and types.
In realising the aesthetic attitude to the world around, aesthetic taste also appears in the form of norms: aesthetic evaluations of new, earlier unknown phenomena, both in the sphere of life and in the realm of art, are programmed in it. At the beginning of its intellectual and emotional development every new generation inherits a system of definite tastes and is guided by them in its aesthetic evaluation of phenomena occurring in life and art. And even having discarded old aesthetic tastes and norms, society retains that objective basis which existed in them, thus guaranteeing the continuity of aesthetic development.
In the human consciousness aesthetic reflection, realised in aesthetic feeling and aesthetic taste, comes to the aid of abstract thinking during the perception of beauty. Usefulness is cognized through reason, beauty---through the ability to contemplate, said G.V. Plekhanov. Taste cannot entirely be reduced to an ability to contemplate, however Plekhanov's idea lies in the fact that the direct perception of an aesthetic object, taken in its totality and completeness, the perception of its content through its form, and the sense of its perfection (or imperfection) are the bases of taste.
A reflection of reality in aesthetic taste is impossible without man's direct contact with the objects and phenomena being reflected and without a development of aesthetic feeling on which aesthetic taste is based. It is impossible to develop aesthetic taste without a direct, active Association with beauty, and artistic taste---without a perception of works of art. That which is commonly called an ``inborn sense of taste" is nothing more than the result of man's constant practical involvement, be it even not specially directed nor consciously organised, in aesthetically perceiving the world around, the result of the influence ,of the environment in which his personality has been formed from early childhood. Impressions.produced by intercourse with nature and its multiform life, with people, by the architectural environment, the world of music, the mode of life, and activities do not leave man unaffected; their aesthetic significance is indelible. It is highly commendable, if aesthetic taste was noticed or, all the more so, emphasised by other people and was developed under the influence of works of art; however, the decisive role in the affirmation of the aesthetic attitude towards reality is played by man's practical association with beauty and the socio-psychological atmosphere in 233 which the formative process of his abilities of assessment took place.
Thus when aims and purposes of utilitarian-pragmatic, consumer kind penetrate man's inner world they destroy aesthetic aspirations rooted in his very nature. Whereas an unselfish, highly moral attitude to the world and to man, permeated by a striving towards good and sympathy, is favourable grounds for developing a healthy aesthetic attitude. It is on these grounds that the general ability to exercise taste is developed. It acquires a concrete form when applied to the various spheres of aesthetic perception and aesthetic activity.
Aesthetic taste includes reflection and cognition of the beauty of specific isolated phenomena in the broad reflection of the aestheticsignificance of an entire complex of phenomena, aesthetic situations on the whole, and beauty as unity in diversity and diversity in unity. Aesthetic taste correlates the beauty of an object with the beauty of its parts and its surroundings and with the beauty of the world at large. In this lie the stability and thoroughness of judgement of good taste.
A strictly logical answer to the question of why a certain being or thing or natural phenomenon is beautiful is, as a rule, highly difficult to obtain, however the judgement of taste, expressed by emotional aesthetic reaction to the object, answers such a question by all the wealth and depth of aesthetic feelings in which the aesthetic experience of the individual is ``compressed''; here the mechanism of aesthetic associations is ``set in motion'', allowing the comparing of that object with other objects and with its surroundings, and the revealing of the distinctiveness of its beauty.
We discern a series of ``layers'' in the structure of aesthetic taste viewed as a form of aesthetic reflection, which intermingle and interact. Such ``layers'' are the perception and evaluation of the beauty of separate elements of reality or in their aggregate which make up integral phenomena or groups of phenomena, and also their correlation with the surrondings and with the meaning of aesthetic values in personal and social life. Aesthetic taste reflects the properties and elements of harmony in phenomena of reality. The faithfulness of this reflection acts as a criterion of the objectivity of aesthetic taste itself, a criterion allowing that taste to be characterised as true or false, normal or perverted, good or bad.
The question of the variety of aesthetic tastes is resolved when we examine the objectivity of their content; the diversity of specific manifestations of beauty presupposes a diversity of preferences of tastes.
However, the variety of aesthetic tastes, and this has long been 234 noticed by philosophers, aestheticians and artists, is also caused by factors of a subjective order rooted in the nature of human sensuousness. It stands to reason that man's main achievement is not the fact that his senses perceive objects more clearly, subtly and acutely than the senses of animals (and it is not always exactly so) but rather in the fact that they perceive the world in a different way. It has been shown that for man, sensuous perception of an object is not only a signal of the usefulness or harmfulness, and not only data concerning the meaning of that object for the biological functioning of the subject, but is also the initial moment of cognition of that object itself and its nature, essence, and measure. At the same time it is also a step towards realising the significance of that object for the life of man taken in its social and particularly its cultural aspect, and is also an opportunity for deriving sensuous satisfaction from that object's appearance, movements, qualities, and beauty.
In this sense the element of subjectivity of the aesthetic perception of the world pointed out above is a universal element, and such subjectivity is not only inherent to all mankind but also constitutes the basis of the community of the aesthetic perception of reality in different eras, and explains the continuity of aesthetic tastes through generations. For ages people have derived pleasure from the beauty of nature, the beauty of the human body, and the beauty of masterpieces created by their hands.
However, neither mankind nor individual man is an abstraction. A man in a class society is a representative of a definite class and lives in a specific socio-historical environment; every personality is characterised by a certain age, sex, and a certain psychophysiological and psychological nature; every individual has a world outlook and belongs to one national group or another, in short, is a specific and individually unique personality. And its individuality and uniqueness are the source of its subjectivity, but a subjectivity of a different kind; it is a subjectivity which gives birth to a variety of aesthetic tastes and evaluations which are at variance with the tastes and evaluations of other people representing different social groups and classes.
The quality of the subjectivity of progressive social consciousness is different from that of the regressive. Hence the possibility of formulating the question of correctness of the reflection and evaluations of reality in class consciousness. It is possible to evaluate the aesthetic taste both of a social group and a separate individual, taking into account thereby the fact that individual taste is determined by the content of the social taste, and by the world outlook and class position of the individual.
235In addition, as I have already mentioned, there are also subjective personal elements in aesthetic taste of the individual which may be defined as developed and undeveloped, broad and narrow, ordinary and refined, and integral and eclectic taste.^^1^^ These concepts characterise the development of the individual's aesthetic taste and do not always concern its qualitative substance. Taste can be correct and good but still not developed; the trend of its development should be guided by the healthy basis it already has. Subtle, refined taste is not always integral taste and eclectic taste is by no means always perverted taste. Tastes fundamentally opposite in their ideological aims are found to be in a state of constant struggle. The tastes of millions of individuals, equally integral and good in the social sense and at the same time different in the individual aspect coexist, enriching and interacting with each other since they have a common objective basis and rest on a general system of aesthetic consciousness. Such tastes are universal in the social sense, and diverse and individual in the personal sense, constituting a harmonious system of social taste.
The Marxist-Leninist concept of aesthetic taste is developing on the basis of the theory of reflection and the theory of the essence of human activity, and on a materialist and dialectical understanding of the nature of values.
Utilitarian, moral, and aesthetic values have an objective basis, and simultaneously they are valuable for man since they satisfy his needs. That which is not a real value in certain conditions can become of value in other. Whether an object, work, or man himself are values for another man or for society as a whole depends both upon the qualities of the phenomenon itself and upon the stage and level of development of the needs which that phenomenon is capable of satisfying. Hence the objective-subjective nature of any value, including aesthetic value.
From this point of view aesthetic taste is seen as a process of the reflection and evaluation of aesthetic values---real objects, things, natural and social phenomena, and the fruits of human activity and the social relations materialised in them. Taste appears as a fact of aesthetic consciousness in which the ability for directly and sensuously comprehending beauty is enhanced by the ability of thinking, and the reflection of objects in their aggregate and in their pithy, sensuously perceptive forms is attended by an emotional evaluation of them.
_-_-_^^1^^ Here I use the term ``eclectic taste" not in the sense of the ideological content of tastes hill in relation to their non-integrity and contradictorin.es!> both from the standpoint of level of development and application to various spheres of reality.
236The question of the correlation of the individual and social taste evaluations of the aesthetic qualities of reality and art arises in connection with this. These phenomena are not to be viewed as simply opposing one another. There is no and cannot be any individual aesthetic evaluation which does not in its essence reflect the opinion of a certain social group; there is no and cannot be any social evaluation which can be expressed apart from the opinions of separate individuals. Of course divergencies between the opinion stated by an individual person and the generally accepted opinion are possible (though in this case one can always determine the social meaning of that ``purely individual evaluation''). However, the force of aesthetic influence on man of majestic natural phenomena, outstanding social events or great works of art is determined by their undisputed aesthetic essence which is manifested in the fact that people are united in their aesthetic evaluation of such objects and find a source of immense aesthetic joy in this passion of theirs.
I spoke of the cognitive function of taste and its significance as a factor of aesthetic evaluation. However, the Marxist-Leninist conception of aesthetic taste is not limited to exposing only its cognitive, evaluative role. Like any fact of consciousness, aesthetic taste is an active factor in the development of human activity, the aim of which is to transform the real world, nature and society. To create according to the laws of beauty means to create in accordance with the requirements of aesthetic taste. It is not only a factor of cognition, but also a stimulus for practical activity. Not only the abilities but also the needs of the individual are ``programmed'' into aesthetic taste. An examination of taste within the context of human activity will give us a more comprehensive idea of its functions, its workings and the ways and means of cultivating it.
Aesthetic taste possesses not only a reflective significance, but also one which stimulates practical activity. In each specific case human activity presupposes the existence of a definite aim which directs this activity, has the character of law for the active person, and presents the result of his labour, i.e., of the work done, in an ideal form for him. As one of the stimuli of aesthetic activity aesthetic taste is linked with aesthetic needs and the aesthetic ideal.
However, if the need for aesthetic pleasure exists as a universal need of man, then its specific nature and the nature of the objects which satisfy it are, in part, dependent upon what the aesthetic taste of the individual is like. An unrefined taste is satisfied with what a person finds by chance in his surroundings and by a passive perception of everything he sees, hears, and feels. An unexacting 237 taste does not strive to choose or select its objects of aesthetic pleasure. A base taste is purposive, but it directs the person towards satisfying his aesthetic need by base, anti-aesthetic means; objects which satisfy such a need are, as a rule, of ugly nature or have a vulgar, utilitarian significance. Therefore, in this case one cannot talk about aesthetic pleasure in the true sense of the idea. The way to such pleasure is paved only by wholesome, good taste. Aesthetic taste, directed at programming the creation of various objects, is always concrete and more definite than taste directed only at perceiving things already made.
The aesthetic ideal, in relation to aesthetic taste, can be examined in its dual meaning. Firstly, it appears as a factor of social consciousness which defines the criteria of the beautiful used by a specific class or social group at a certain period in history. This ideal is conditioned by the whole system of social being, by economic interests, and also by political, moral, and similar outlooks; it is also linked with the general level of development of social activity and culture, i.e., with the conquering of nature by man, his humaneness, and also with whether or not humanistic standards are present in social relations.
The aesthetic ideal of society influences the formation of society's aesthetic taste and determines its social trend. It is as if this taste concentrated within itself all the social experience of aesthetic activity. It is guided by the results attained by the activity and programmes further development. Way of life in its outward manifestations, social rituals, ceremonies, everyday life, fashion---all these, in expressing the aesthetic ideal, influence social taste and at the same time are created and developed under its influence. The presence of certain general features of style in the art of every historical period reflects the existence of such a taste in society. Aesthetic theory substantiates it and artistic practice realises it.
In addition, man's activity evolves from the specific activity of specific people. In connection with this it is as if the aesthetic ideal of society were ``split up'', turning into a series of the specific aesthetic ideals of separate individuals in reference to the various spheres of their activity. Here the aesthetic ideal appears in its second, more narrow meaning, as a factor of individual aesthetic consciousness. In participating in the aesthetic activity of countless individuals, ideals promote the cultivating in each of them of an idea of the final aim of their activity and what should be achieved as a result of their labour. It is as though the ideal were ``broken up" into many specific ideals connected with the solving of some concrete tasks. Individual aesthetic tastes correspond to this 238 second meaning of the concept of ideal. They absorb the experience of the individual personality and its inimitable peculiarities and aesthetic needs guided on the whole by the ideal, tastes and needs of the entire society, but infinitely more varied and specific.
In this way the aesthetic aim of human activity is embodied in the aesthetic ideal. Aesthetic taste is called upon to collate the compliance of this activity with intention and aim in all stages of the process of their realisation. Aesthetic principle, and therefore aesthetic ideal and aesthetic taste are, as I have already mentioned, characteristic of any trend or type, and thus any sphere of human activity.
The laws of beauty are manifested in industrial activity as a principle which is necessary to take into account in creating material values. The aesthetic taste of the worker influences both his intention and the appearance of the product being made, and participates in choosing the material, methods of treatment, colours, texture, and the proportion of the parts of the object being produced. True, the most decisive thing in the process-of labour is the functional significance of the article being made, but if not for the demands of aesthetics, then all objects intended for a certain practical purpose would not be as varied and as unique as they really are. One cannot, of course, reduce the requirements of aesthetics only to the desire and taste of the creator; the latter must to a certain extent take into consideration the taste of the consumer. It should be kept in mind, however, that the consumer's taste is formed to a great extent by that which is produced for him. ``An objet d'art creates a public that has artistic taste and is able to enjoy beauty---and the same can be said of any other product.''^^1^^ By these words Marx clearly expressed the necessity of the aesthetic element in any form of practice and defined the role of the products of human activity in forming aesthetic taste.
And in so far as an aesthetic element is inherent in the very purpose of a man working in the sphere of material production, his aesthetic taste participates in determining to what extent that purpose is realised. The creator himself should make an aesthetic evaluation of his object before the consumer does. And he makes it not only after it is finished, but also during the very process of creating it and in its various stages, always guided by his aesthetic taste.
It is the same in intellectual activity. Purpose, intention and execution exist in any form of this activity. If the purpose of the scientist is to seek the truth, then both he and those who perceive _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Moscow, 1970, p. 147
239 his work cannot be indifferent to what paths he takes to achieve it and how the results are expressed. The mathematician and physicist see not only the truth of a formula but its beauty as well, just as it is important for a chess-player not only to win the game but also to gain aesthetic satisfaction from it. A point gained as a result of his opponent's slip is different from one earned as a result of a beautiful combination of moves.Aesthetic taste in intellectual activity is also linked with the style of presentation or expression of the thought However, intellectual activity is not limited to outward beauty. Its true aesthetic meaning is inherent in the nature of the thought itself, in its logic, manner of argumentation, wit, and depth. The aesthetic taste of a man involved in intellectual theoretical work cannot be satisfied only by the form of its outward expression; it must also cover its content and give an evaluation of it. .A beautiful phrase in science is often not an object of admiration but an object of criticism. However, an aesthetic evaluation of scientific activity does not completely coincide with the characteristics of its content; thus all the diversity of the elements constituting the products of theoretical activity are aesthetically evaluated, including the structure of a scientific work, the elegance of its proportions, and the scientist's line of reasoning.
Aesthetic taste in the activity of a scientist enhances his sense of proportion when emotional evaluative elements are brought into the presentation of theoretical material, when artistic images drawn from works of art are used in proving scientific propositions.
The role of the aesthetic factor in man's communicative activity is highly important. Properly speaking, communication permeates all forms of human activity---without communication neither production, nor cognition of the world, nor processes of communicating social experience, nor social struggle, nor art can exist. However, communication possesses its own specific features, including aesthetic features. The aesthetic features of communication are manifested through its basic universal means ---language.
Aesthetic taste in the process of communication has a dual meaning: with its help man is capable of consolidating and intensifying the evaluative side of the communicated information and gains independent aesthetic satisfaction in the very process of communication, and through it, in the subjects of this process, the people participating in it.
If aesthetic values are created in the process of labour, then everyday life---its tenor and surroundings, the interior of the home,'' clothes, man's behaviour---taken in the broad and narrow meanings of the word, is linked with their utilisation and 240 consumption. Everyday life is also a form of human activity; the consumption of aesthetic values can be creative and non-creative, active and formally passive. This or that type of consumption of aesthetic values is also determined to a great extent by the level and quality of the personality's aesthetic taste.
The dialectics of taste is expressed in conjunction with two of its seemingly contradictory functions----``defensive'', ``protective'' and ``investigating'', ``innovative''. However, it is this very contradiction that constitutes the specifics of the nature of taste and stipulates its constant development.
The cultivating of taste on the basis of traditions---social, national, family and others---gives it a certain stability and power of resistance against aesthetic innovations. The first reaction to any aesthetic novelty in industry or everyday life is, as a rule, negative. This can be particularly clearly observed in the field of fashion. It would be incorrect to consider this resistance as only a negative factor. Novelties can be different; some proceed from a false originality which itself bears a negative character---choose, do and act ``not like everyone else'', ``not like is generally accepted''. But established taste is not incidental, it is conditioned by preceding experience which it absorbs and consolidates, and is based on reason. Therefore, it has a rational content which it would be incorrect to ignore. The viability and compliance of various aesthetic innovations to people's interests, requirements and resources, especially in the sphere of everyday life, are tested with the aid of established taste which evolved over a more or less lengthy period of history, a certain ``trial period'', so to say. These innovations, whether in the field of fashions, style of intercourse and behaviour, or decorative principles, must either gradually gain recognition or reveal their uselessness. During this period taste especially clearly reveals its evaluative essence in defending established aesthetic norms and protecting them from destruction and replacement. However, the ``defensive'' function of taste, if absolutised as its only function, becomes conservative in nature and impedes introduction of new aesthetic values arising during the process of the renewal and development of social life and the advent of new classes and social groups on the historical scene in the course of the development of production, technology, science and art.
A change in aesthetic taste is inevitable, during the process of which its ``investigating'', creative function is more and more positively uncovered. A man ``with taste"---that is with developed taste or, more accurately, with taste capable of being developed---earlier than others can evaluate positively all that is __PRINTERS_P_241_COMMENT__ 9---121 241 new and, based on tradition, reflects the deep-rooted trends of his time. Such a person selects the most promising of the new aesthetic values, those which have prospects of becoming stable. Good taste lies not in the unconscious, thoughtless, flatly imitative character of aesthetic activity but rather in the critical assimilation of new aesthetic achievements and in using them to attain certain goals and to solve the problems placed by life itself.
Aesthetic taste plays a particularly important role in the artisticactivity of people. Art as a product of artistic activity is not the only manifestation of man's aesthetic perception or aesthetic transformation of the world. However, art occupies a special place in the system of the aesthetic assimilation of reality. Art, being an artistic figurative form of reflecting objective reality, is capable of concretely and sensuously expressing the unity and mutual penetration of the content and form of the objects, phenomena of the world surrounding us and above all those of human life. Through art the aesthetic aspects of reality and of all forms of human activity receive their most adequate reflection. Man's aesthetic feelings find their concentrated expression in works of art. Aesthetic evaluations receive their most precise and comprehensive expression in artistic creativity in a system of evaluations of the phenomena of the real world and social life, evaluations which exist in art as well as in other forms of social consciousness. Being one of the forms of human activity, art embodies in its works the ability for creating according to the laws of beauty both in emotional content as well as in the concretely material appearance of the artistic values being created. In other words, the artistic element permeates the entire work of art. Therefore, the satisfying of the aesthetic needs of society in all their diversity is one of the essential purposes of artistic creativity.
The features of aesthetic taste applied to art are linked with a growth in the role of the rational, analytical principle in the judgement of taste. An aesthetic evaluation of a work of art is impossible on a purely emotional, sensuous level. It demands an analysis of content and form and a correlating of the work to life and to the social aims of artistic creativity. The common formula of taste---''1 like it---I don't like it``---doesn't work in relation to works of art as any sort of satisfactory characterisation of their aesthetic value. Here the matter lies in the complex structure of art's aesthetic value of which I spoke earlier. In evaluating whether or not the various elements of form in a work of art or in the performance of a performer (in the performing arts) correspond to their intention and execution, there can be contradictory judgements of one and the same work. In other words, one and the 242 same work can arouse contradictory aesthetic judgements concerning its various aspects. A person with a developed taste is capable of separating various components in his perception of a work. The level of accuracy of the perception depends upon the level of aesthetic competency of the person expressing the evaluation.
Notwithstanding all the importance of the analytical cognitive approach to art, the significance of the synthetic approach of aesthetic taste in perceiving a work of art must, nevertheless, not be minimised. For taste, in a irfanner of speaking, concentrates preceding artistic experience which allows one to penetrate into the essence of a work comparatively quickly and accurately and to receive the most complete aesthetic satisfaction from it. Taste also appears here as a measure of aesthetic joy* (I am speaking, of course, of developed and good aesthetic taste).
Researchers of artistic taste point out its various levels. Taste is developed from evaluation of individual works of art to a comprehension of the value of its individual genres and forms. By the faithfulness and depth of these evaluations we can judge the individual's level of artistic development. It is taste that determines the trend of the individual's artistic interests.
The aesthetic sense of the artist himself plays a most important role in the fight for new, progressive tastes. Any bad taste or incorrect understanding of the state and level of the public's aesthetic tastes that might appear in a work of art can have a negative effect on aesthetic education. In addition, with the development of mass media---cinema, radio, television---aesthetic tastes not only can be formed but also harmed and ruined on a vast scale.
Correct and purposeful formation of aesthetic taste is impossible without the transformation of the world according to the laws of beauty, without intellectual and cultural development of the individual, which covers the sphere of his world outlook, psychology, emotional make-up, and practical activity.
The formation of aesthetic taste, and above all the aesthetic taste of the growing generation, is determined by conditions existing in a socialist society, by its many aspects of life---labour, social principles, communist moral attitudes, everyday life, and culture. Aesthetic taste is developed in conformity with the entire way of life of socialist society and is a component part of that society, and influences its further development.
__PRINTERS_P_243_COMMENT__ 9* [243] __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE INDIVIDUAL AS THE EMBODIMENTA. Bazhenova
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.``The typical" is one of the traditional cardinal problems in art and aesthetics. A retrospective summary of research in this area would lead back into the distant past and take in the entire history of art and aesthetic thought, particularly the aesthetics of realism which occupied a central place in nineteenth century realistic art.
Vissarion Belinsky, a representative of pre-Marxist materialist aesthetics, emphasised the significance of this problem when he defined ``typification'' as the basic law of creativity, the basis of the artist's creative originality, and the hallmark certifying poetic talent. Engels defined realism as the truthful representation of typical characters in typical circumstances; this definition of realistic art, which has great theoretical and practical significance, became the general property of Marxist aesthetics and the cornerstone of socialist realist aesthetics.
The clarity with which the Marxist-Leninist classics formulated and resolved this question does not, however, exclude the further development of Marxist theory in new historical circumstances. Whenever a specific historical situation changes and new social conflicts and social types appear, or whenever science and art develop to a higher degree and acquire a new character, this traditional problem is posed anew and new essential elements in its resolution and the distribution of accents are revealed.
An accurate and historically concrete analysis of ``the typical"is organically linked to the most fundamental problems in aesthetics, and therefore this question has been consistently important throughout the history of Soviet aesthetics. The related problems are: the essence and special characteristics of art, art's social and aesthetic nature, the peculiarities of the reflection of reality in art, 244 the nature of imagery, the manner of artistic thought, and the artistic vision of the world.
A great amount of research related to this problem appeared in the 1950's and early 1%0's. It was perhaps somewhat one-sided in its emphasis on such questions as the objective basis of typification as a creative method, in defining the social and class nature of typical phenomena in real life, and the manner of reflecting these phenomena (events, characters, etc.) in art. Seeking to define artistic typification, these studies proceeded from the assumption that a clear distinction, even an opposition, existed between science and art as methods of cognition of surrounding world, comparing the artistic image with the logical concepts advanced by science. Their most important contribution was that they formulated a number of problems based on the contrast and differentiation between the results of artistic and scientific cognition. All the studies very correctly pointed out that typification allows the artist or scientist to discover what is essential and significant in reality, while at the same time they criticised the conception of ``the typical" as a statistical average or mechanical sum of similarities and the reducing of the artistic ``type'' to nothing more than the social essence of the object represented.
This question, however, has by no means been exhausted and the controversy around it continues. In the last few years interest in the question has abated somewhat and fewer studies on the subject have appeared, but it has nevertheless become possible to resolve this problem more profoundly and more flexibly. Its resolution is above all a result of the revolution in science and technology, of the broader nature of research being carried out into the nature of the creative process for both the scientist and the artist, of the appearance of new types of artistic generalisation, and of the recognition that scientific and artistic means of cognition are not mutually exclusive. In general, then, recent studies have concluded that a solid link exists between artistic generalisation and contemporary science and philosophy.
Like all the other human sciences, aesthetics has benefited from new and more precise research methods. Scholars in both science and art are taking a stand against placing their disciplines in opposition to each other and now stress that in principle there is no distinction to be made.^^1^^
In fact, the contrast between the ``exact'' and ``inexact'' sciences and the arguments over ``physicists'' and ``lyricists'' were not very _-_-_
^^1^^ See on this subject D. S. Likhachyov, ``On the Social Responsibility of Literary Study'', Context 1973, Moscow 1974. p. 6 (in Russian)
245 productive. The only positive result of the discussion was that it drew the attention of natural scientists to principles of aesthetics.The fact that art and science have been shown by experiment to have the same gnosiological basis as two varieties of human cognition does not in the slightest detract from the specific characteristics of art, which is unique and irreplaceable as a form of social consciousness. Contemporary aesthetics must inevitably take as its starting point the fact that art, the object of aesthetic research, is unique. Therefore, as Academician Yegorov has correctly observed, to speak of ``the exhaustive character of `technical' and `instrumental' methods of research into aesthetic phenomena, or of the total identification of aesthetic research methods with those of natural science" means to ignore the essential, specific characteristics of art as the object of aesthetic research in contemporary conditions.^^1^^
A novel by the Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, ``The Magellan Cloud'', tells of a distant future in which the main character, Zmur, a mathematician of genius who is able to solve any problem in the application of mathematics to all spheres of knowledge, stumbles over the problem of a precise definition of the essence of art and is unable to discover an all-embracing but specific formula by means of which technology could explain and classify works of art, explain the nature of talent and, most important of all, be able to create new works of art by purely technical means. Zmur spends long nights in front of his three-dimensional trion screen staring at Goya's seething linear compositions, Vermeer's spacious and airy paintings, Titian's dynamic nudes, Rembrandt's figures caught in mid-breath, and Nefertiti's exquisitely sculptured head. However, his long and strenuous labour does not bear fruit: ``the mystery of art" remains unrevealed and the formula which Zmur has worked out only establishes the rhythm of a repeated artistic design and hundreds of minor details in a still-born composition with a perfect white circle in the centre.
Art's fundamental secret---its beauty and uniqueness---eluded the grasp of the great mathematician. It proved impossible to translate Nefertiti into mathematical terms without eliminating her very essence: ``she was, after all, only rough stone hewn by some Egyptian craftsman forty-five centuries ago.'' The thoughts of the author and his hero are consonant with the questions which have arisen in contemporary aesthetics about research methodology, the _-_-_
^^1^^ See A. G. Yegorov, ``The Scientific and Technological Revolution and Art''. Context 1973, p. 83 (in Russian)
246 application of models in aesthetic theory, etc. Lem warns against the dangers of an excessively mechanistic, superficial approach to a subject as delicate as art.The questions which have arisen in contemporary aesthetics make it necessary to re-examine aesthetics as a whole, i.e. its fundamental and ``eternal'' problems, taking into consideration the present level of development in science and in art. Primary among these problems is that of imagery in art; examination of the nature of the artistic image from all aspects is certain to lead to a better understanding of the specific nature of art as well as of the general principles on which art and other forms of cognition are based.^^1^^
Given current scientific knowledge about the creative process,^^2^^ we now know more about the underlying principles in the artistic reflection of reality which are important in typification and individualisation.
What is universal, essential and typical in art as reflected in what is individual and concrete: this was shown clearly even by preMarxist aesthetics. (In idealist aesthetics it was shown best by Hegel and in pre-Marxist materialist aesthetics, by the revolutionary democrats Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky.)
The individual and unique traits in a work of art are the most important manifestation of the artist's originality, world-outlook, and ability to give art ``a living soul''. This is the key to art's ``mystery''.
The concept of ``what is individual" in art is applicable to all the phenomena, events, situations, and details in a work of art, as well as to its unique, concretely historical material. The artist's originality manifests itself particularly in his portrayal of human character and in his recognition of the uniqueness of the individual personality.
Characterisation in art and literature is a reflection of real people in life, each person being uniquely individual. This individual uniqueness is preserved in art. However a man's character in real lite, while serving as the basis for a ``typical'' character in art, is still not entirely identical to the latter. If this were the case, _-_-_
^^1^^ See, for example, the recent studies: The Leninist Theory oj Reflection and Contemporary Science. Sofia 1973; A Yegorov, Problems of Aesthetics. Moscow 1974; Y. Lukin. Lenin and the I'heory of Socialist An, Moscow 1973; N. Leizerov, Imagery in Art. Moscow 1974; B. Suchkov, The Historical Fate of Realism, Moscow, 1970
~^^2^^ See, for instance, A. Korshunov, The Theory of Reflection and Creation, Moscow, 1971; V. Tyukhtin, Reflection. Systems and Cybernetics, Moscow. 1972; E. Groniov, Literary Creation, Moscow 1971; Artistic and Scientific Creation. Leningrad 1972, etc.
247 art and literature would only imitate life and therefore be useless. In life each and every character exists as a separate entity. In art the individual character acquires the traits of a type and becomes a typical character. The typical character is always the artist's creation, his generalisation of life's variety and of the wealth of individual human traits, his blend of reality and creative thought, the fruit of his artistic imagination. It would therefore be unthinkable to show correctly the nature of individual traits in art without reference to typical traits; i.e. character cannot be shown without referring to type and also without disclosing the gnosiological and social roots of artistic generalisation.A definition of what makes a character typical may be approached from several directions: either from that of the creation of types at various times in the. history of art, or from that of an individual artist's work, or from that of the particular types characteristic of various artistic trends or styles or, most important of all, from an objective point of view, i.e. comparing typical characters in art with their counterparts in reality and with the very concept of types as defined by science.
In each of the above instances the concepts of ``the type" combines certain characteristic aspects and qualities held in common by a group of phenomena, events, personalities, etc. These general, fundamental characteristics of a given phenomenon are the object of study in various areas of specialised knowledge and are also of great importance to the artist. This, however, exhausts what is common to ``the typical" as used in different spheres of life.
It is important here not only to emphasise the common ground between these spheres but also to distinguish ``the type" in literature from ``the type" in other spheres of human knowledge.
The object of our examination will be the concept of the type only as it relates to the human personality as the main source for the creation of artistic types. Man is a many-sided being and is bound to the surrounding world in many different ways. Therefore the traits that people have in common may also be revealed in the process of studying man's various relationships with the world, in this way clarifying different facets of the human personality. One of the major achievements of Marxist-Leninist philosophy is that it gives a scientific definition of man as a totality of his social relationships.
Sociology explains people's common social traits in terms of social and class types. Different social types embody the essence of their class or of a given social group. The appearance of new social types in life is tied in with concrete circumstances and class relations.
248Lenin often spoke of the existence of various types corresponding to their given group or class.^^1^^
Man as a social entity is many-sided but his dominant characteristic is his class nature. In addition to this, as a member of society man lives in a given country and belongs to a given national group. This also engenders certain common traits which condition man's spirit, culture, etc. One must remember, however, that man is an object of study not only for the social sciences, but also for the natural sciences. Physiology, for instance, studies different physiological types distinguished one from the other according to their types of higher nervous activity. Psychology, in close alliance with physiology, establishes different emotional and psychological types. Man's physiological and psychological nature and the differences in human temperament and character, etc. are linked to social milieu and are to a great extent even determined by it, but nevertheless they are not entirely determined by social and class factors.
Pavlov's definition of the four basic types of higher nervous activity, representing all of an individual's traits acquired by the activity of the cerebral hemispheres together with those he inherits, is of particular interest in this connection. Pavlov showed in a great number of experiments how the relations between the two signalling systems vary from one individual to another and thus create individual traits in perception and thought-processes in different people.^^2^^
In some people the first signalling system is highly developed (a type which perceives reality predominantly through emotions and images), while in others the second signalling system prevails (a predominantly verbal-logical type). Generalising these qualities, physiology and psychology have established different types of memory, imagination, temperament, etc., i.e. typical traits in the human personality.
Thus, there are many different general personality traits. These traits are also in evidence in art. But then, one might ask, what distinguishes social, national, emotional and other types from ``the type" in art?
Let us take, for example, ``the typical" in art as compared with ``the typical" in sociology. Lenin offers a political and social analysis of an example from the latter category in his essay, In the _-_-_
^^1^^ See: V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 36, p. 207
^^2^^ See: I. P. Pavlov, Complete Works, Moscow-Leningrad 1951, Vol. 3, Book 2, p. 346 (in Russian)
249 Servants' Quarters, considering ``the servant" as a distinct social type arising as a result of given social conditions:``The necessity to combine a very moderate dose of love for the people with a very big dose of obedience and of protection of the master's interests that is specific to the position of the lackey, inevitably produces the hypocrisy that is typical of the lackey as a social type. Here it is a case of a social type and not of the qualities possessed by individuals. A lackey may be the most honest of men, an exemplary member of his family, an excellent citizen but he is fatally doomed to hypocrisy because the main feature of his trade is the combination of the interests of the master whom he is 'pledged to serve truly and faithfully' and those of the milieu from which servants are recruited."^^1^^
Lenin analyses the servant here from the point of view of a sociologist or politician, consciously ignoring the servant's traits as an individual and focusing attention on his political essence as a given social type.
An artist, on the other hand, sees the same phenomena in his own way. He cannot and indeed must not ignore individual traits of character. It is not the ``social type" as an object of scientific analysis that interests him but the ``typical character" as a unique, whole individual. (We might recall, for instance, such different portrayals of ``the servant" in Russian literature as the devoted and honest Savelich in Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter, the elderly, touching figure of Firs in Cheknov's The Cherry Orchard, and the ominous, envious Smerdyakov in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.
It would be unfair to place the social type and the typical character in art in complete opposition to each other, but one must be able to distinguish between them. They are concepts of the same order but are not identical. The common clement is that both the social type studied by the sociologist and the artistic type created by the artist are generalisations; in both instances it is the most essential traits of character in people from given classes or groups that are brought to our attention. The nature of the generalisation in each instance is, however, different.
In studying a given artist's body of work and the ``types'' he has created, Marxist-Leninist aesthetics always seeks to reveal the social and historical significance of this work, i.e. to reveal what is universal in the realm of the uniquely individual. When evaluating typical characters in realist literature and art, the Marxist classics _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 29. p. 541
250 always emphasised art's capacity for creating socially significant generalisations.Marx and Engels condemned any attempt to interpret typical characters in realist art in terms of ``eternal'' and universal human qualities alone, unrelated to concrete historical and social conditions. Thus, Engels criticised Karl Griin who had rejected concrete historical analysis of Goethe and his work in preference of a ``universally human" point of view. Engels showed that Grun did not give a ``universally human" evaluation of Goethe, but a petty bourgeois, narrow-minded one.^^1^^ The typical characters of Ibsen's plays were seen by Engels as embodying the typical traits of bourgeois Norway at that particular time. Dante's characters showed (according to Engels) the decline of the old feudal order and the birth of the new capitalist order, while Balzac's characters expressed the social relations of his time with profound penetration.
Marxist-Leninist aesthetics emphasises that man's character is a concrete historical concept. Social relations place an ineradicable stamp on all aspects of a personality: a man's social and class nature are expressed in all aspects of his life, from his social position, world outlook, goals and ideals, to his individual psychological traits, moral principles, habits, etc.
Plekhanov's ideas of human character in reality and in art are particularly relevant here, deriving as they do from Marxist historical teachings on the social, national, psychological, and ethical bases of character.^^2^^ Plekhanov considered the guiding principle in art to be the psychological development of character, the psychological justification and convincingness of the main character's behaviour and feelings which must arise naturally from the situation. An individual's psychology is inextricably linked to his social nature. For the realistic artist psychological portrayal of the individual is the major means of revealing that character's social nature. ``The dialectic of the soul" is therefore both the means and the end in art.
However, this question must not be over-simplified by assuming that psychological and social-class traits are in full agreement with each other. Life is more complex than that. It is not infrequent that strong, sincere people, honest in their own way but without any comprehension of the nature of social struggle (due to their social limitations or other reasons) side with reactionary forces and support elements in life that have outlived their time. We meet with such contrasts in life as well as in literature and art.
_-_-_^^1^^ See: Marx and Engels, Works, Vol. 21, p. 63 (in Russian)
~^^2^^See: G V. Plekhanov, Works, Moscow 192b, Vol.VI, p. 281
251Thus, Sholokhov showed Grigory Melekhov \nAnd Quiet Flows the Don to be a sincere and intelligent man who possessed unusual strength of character but who fled headlong from revolution into counter-revolution, unable to side wholeheartedly with the revolutionary masses.
It is very important to remember the complexity of a character's social make-up, for there are no ``pure'' phenomena either in nature or in society.^^1^^ Realistic art seeks to reflect the complexity and contradiction in human character as it interacts with the world.
Referring to the classics convinces us that while one may criticise the vulgarised point of view which would reduce the artistic type to the expression of a given social force, yet it would be a mistake to go to the other extreme by denying art the ability to reveal the social nature of the depicted subject through its own special means. This mistake would deprive art of its most valuable feature, its great social resonance and its ability to make social generalisations. Socialist realism has made a great contribution to world literature through its social content and affirmation of a new hero and a new concept of personality.
In order to clarify the dialectical unity of the typical and the individual it might be worthwhile to examine here the very concept of ``typical character'', not only in relation to ``type'' but also in relation to ``character''.
Psychology is the specialisation particularly concerned with human character and it defines ``character'' as the totality of a man's most formative psychological traits, stamping his every action and deed and, finally, determining his entire behaviour. By analysing an individual's attitude to the world, to other people, to his work, to himself, etc., a psychologist draws conclusions about the existence of other, more general traits of character in humanity as a whole which, in their different combinations, determine the direction a personality will take (e.g. his consistency, honesty, energy, courage, conviction, lack of principle, etc.). The psychologist's generalisation is a result of abstracting separate facts into his study and therefore it eliminates the individual configuration. Thus one may posit, for example, the typical traits of character of Soviet man: his patriotism, team spirit, communist attitude to work, etc.
In art these general characteristics of Soviet man are embodied in an individual figure and in his actions and deeds as the unique social and psychological qualities of a given man which belong only _-_-_
^^1^^ See: V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 241
252 to this ``particular'' personality. One example of this would be the figure of Chapayev in the Vasilyev brothers' film. This typical character bears the imprint of his creator's individuality and ability to give his characters broad general significance. Chapayev's individual traits of character, actions, deeds, and all the details about him are based on a profound generalisation, the disclosure of a new type of talented Red Army leader who conies from among the people.A man's individual traits reflect socially significant traits which belong to a given social type. This social nature manifests itself in character traits and in spiritual qualities. Man's individuality in turn colours his social behaviour. Thus, the typical character in literature is a concrete and individual embodiment of a social, moral, and psychological type. The truth of an individual character derives from the fact that he embodies a universal human type as well as a universal social type. (Every man is honest in his own way, loves and hates in his own way, demonstrates his strength of will and courage in specific situations, and has a strongly individual mind.)
The strength of genuine art lies in the depth and vividness of its portrayal of individual characters.
A man's social, class, national, moral, and psychological traits do not merely add together to form a sum: these aspects of his character intermingle and condition each other so as to create a unique individual, and furnish the specific basis for a type.
Disturbed by theatrical melodramas and vaudevilles and their absence of typical characters, Gogol once wrote: ``We need truthful representation of character without those same old cliches, characters true to their national mould and capable of stunning us with their true-to-life air, causing us to exclaim 'Yes, this seems to be a man 1 know'. Only character portrayal of this type can be truly useful.''^^1^^
Nevertheless the individual in realistic art is not identical to the individual in reality. Literature does not set itself the goal of reproducing each and every minor trait of the represented fact. Individual traits in a typical character fulfill a generalising function and make it possible to focus attention on certain aspects of the human personality. In art life's complexity and the true nature of characters and their actions, which are hidden in reality, become more perceptible and more explicable. The artist reveals the true nature of a fact through its individuality. Individual traits in turn make the ``essence'' tangible and give it a visible face.
_-_-_^^1^^ Russian Writers on Literature. Leningrad 1954, Vol. 1, p. 468 (in Russian)
253Individual traits in a typical character are not copied from any one individual, nor are general traits an abstraction. Individual traits are generalised and general traits are individualised. The general and the individual are organically fused and transformed into the characteristic and the particular. The very concept of a ``typical character" is profoundly dialectical. The combination of words, ``typical'' and ``character'' is far from accidental. Together they express a new quality which is neither the same as any given individual fact in reality nor the same as any general social or psychological phenomenon. A typical character is thus the point at which the internal and external aspects of a work of art are so fused that, in Hegel's words, the ideal and the universal shine ``through the human eye, through the face, muscles, skin, through a man's whole appearance".^^1^^ An individual's thoughts, feelings, and deeds represent an entire class, people, nation, and society.
An individual's fate, a man's very life in all its uniqueness is not only a means of characterising society or a group of people of the same type but is also the ultimate purpose and the specific content of the creative process. At no time should the typical character, as an expression of individuality, be reduced to a mere copy of a single, separate individual. However, differences do exist in ways of creating typical characters even within realistic art alone. The characters in both Dead Souls and War and Peace are typical characters. The character traits of Manilov, Plyushkin, and Sobakevich are revealed in real circumstances, in everyday life, just as are those of Andrey Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov and the other main figures of War and Peace.
The ways used to create these characters are different, however. Gogol focuses attention on one identifiable trait of character and exaggerates it, subordinating all the other traits to this one, thus revealing the nature of these stable, fixed types. Tolstoy, on the other hand, communicates the very process of character formation, ``the dialectic of the soul'', and reveals man's reactions to the surrounding world from many points of view. Tolstoy spoke clearly about this characteristic of his creative process in his dispute with Korolenko. Considering the state of contemporary literature (i. e. in the 1880's-1890's), Korolenko remarked that ``the reason for the lack of great writers is that we are now living in a transitional period when there is no equilibrium, everything is moving, nothing is stable and it is therefore difficult to grasp hold of something definite, to typify it".^^2^^ Tolstoy justifiably protested against this, saying:
_-_-_^^1^^ Hegel. Works. Moscow-Leningrad. 1933. Vol. 12, p. 21 (in Russian)
~^^2^^ Russian Writers on Literature, 1939. Vol. 2, p. 146 (in Russian)
254``No, I don't think this is true; people's characters are always changing and while ordinary people may not notice their nuances, an artist is able to grasp typical traits and to help us understand people's characters. This is the great significance of fiction."^^1^^
It is this movement in the formation and development of character, its psychological process, its laws, that Tolstoy succeeded in capturing particularly profoundly and skilfully in his work.
The ability of realism to portray characters as they develop in concrete circumstances in life makes it possible to depict personality from many points of view and thus to reveal it thoroughly. Depending on the artist's goal and on which aspects of character he emphasises, a typical character may generalise different aspects of personality with differing degrees of typification.
Having said that character is portrayed from many points of view in realistic art, one must not, however, conclude that artistic types express all sides of human personality with equal force and depth. Each typical character possesses a special aspect, a particular perspective in lighting, so to speak. Each artist's resolution of the dialectical relationship between the general and the individual in a given type is in direct relation to the degree of typification sought, as well as to the ways employed.
In this connection the reasons for the degree and depth of typification in a character, and the extent to which this character is artistically successful, acquire great importance. If we examine the history of realistic art from this point of view, we see that the concept of ``a typical character" is very broad.
A wide variety of characters may be termed ``typical'': Hamlet and Don Quixote, Plyushkin and the old Grandet, Julien Sorel and Frank Cowperwood, Martin Eden and Foma Gordeyev, Mine. Ranevskaya and Nina Zarechnaya, Chapayev and Davydov, Vassily Tyorkin and sergeant-major Vaskov, etc. Even the simple listing of these characters demonstrates the difference in their typification and the different ways employed. Some, like Hamlet, Don Quixote, and Plyushkin, despite their unique individuality and concretely historical configuration are nevertheless generalised to such a high degree that they have become nominally tragic or comic characters; others, like Julien Sorel or Frank Cowperwood, represent whole epochs and express the essential traits of their time and their class; yet others, like Mine. Ranevskaya or Nina Zarechnaya, embody only certain aspects, moments, or ``elements'' of a type.
_-_-_^^1^^ Russian Writers on Literature, Vol. 2, pp. 146--47
255Heroes in Soviet literature like the dedicated communist Pavel Korchagin, Davydov, a worker turned kolkhoz organiser, the fearlessly merry and wordly-wise soldier Vassily Tyorkin, and many others are a deeply rooted part of our culture, having stepped from the pages of books into our lives, so to speak. They are typical characters on a large scale with great power to affect people emotionally. The breadth and depth of a character's typicalness and the degree of his generalisation depend on many factors, both objective and subjective. The significance of a typical character undoubtedly depends on the choice of subject and the way in which this character reveals the leading types and the most deeply rooted social conflicts of that moment in history. Typical characters of this kind, if profoundly portrayed, achieve great social resonance and show the typical characteristics of their entire society. The ``superfluous men" of mid-nineteenth century Russian literature were significant types in this sense, as were the ``men of the sixties" in the works of Chernyshevsky and Turgenev, and the workerrevolutionaries in Gorky's works, etc. It follows from this that the breadth and depth of typical characters is connected with the portrayal of great historical events and decisive conflicts, for human character shows itself most clearly at turning points in history when leading historical types appear and require generalisation of the highest intensity. The resolution of great historical tasks requires characters of exceptional strength. Soviet literature and art contain such leading historical types who reflect decisive moments in the October Revolution, the Civil War, the Second World War, etc. Characters like Chapayev, Levinson, Pavel Korchagin, Davydov, and the young heroes of Krasnodon revealed themselves at historical turning points. The most essential and necessary condition for creating a typical character is to reveal this character through a particular conflict in life, to show him in typical circumstances.
While speaking about the significance of the choice of subject for a ``type'', we should turn our attention to the existence and degree of development shown by the subject in real life.
The artist is by no means indifferent to exactly which aspects of character or which phenomena in life he portrays in his work: types which have only just appeared and are scarcely noticeable, or types which ha,ve already become stabilised and are naturally more perceptible and thus more easily transformed into artistic types. (Korolenko is therefore right up to a certain point in his disagreement with Tolstoy referred to above.) Remarking on the difficulties in creating a positive hero from among the people, Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote that a fully conscious type did not yet 256 exist in real life and that only separate and individual positive aspects, and not the essence, of the Russian national character had appeared. It is the most important task of literature, however, to discover these elements of a type still in the process of formation. Thus, artists are frequently the first discoverers of new types. Gorky, for instance, ``discovered'' the conscious workerrevolutionary type in his work.
We must, however, take note of the fact that this type did not appear all at once in Gorky's work. Before creating the classic character of Pavel Vlasov, Gorky created separate `elements', or basic character traits of this type in the figures of Nil (The Petty Bourgeois), Levshin (Enemies) and others.
The writer's perspective in time and the degree to which the type had already established itself in reality are obviously very important for the writer. Nevertheless, or in fact fortunately, many writers do not wait for a given event or type to stabilise or to repeat itself many times before attempting to depict these new, still minor, traits in concrete and typical characters. (This is why Turgenev's contemporaries said he was able to ``catch the fleeting moment''. Konstantin Simonov's work is always highly attuned to its time, too.)
It would not be correct, however, to say that depth of character depends only on the significance of the subject chosen or on the degree to which it had already established itself in reality. The subject offers only the grounds for creating a typical character. The theme and conflict are also important in themselves but they do not determine the strength of the characters' generalisation. The whole essence of art is its ability to reveal character and to elevate a real prototype into ``the pearl of creation" in Gogol's words.^^1^^ Often the depiction of highly important events and characters turns into only a superficial illustration of the events, untransformed by the creative power of the artist. The opposite is also often true: the history of art is full of examples when what seemed to be an insignificant fact made it possible to create a typical character generalising the fact with such power that it became a landmark in art. Therefore, it is not only the subject that is important but even more so the depth of the artist's poetic conception, i.e. his ability to relate the phenomenon itself to its essence and to illuminate an individual concrete character with general significance and thus to show the dialectics of things and their irrevocability.
The significance of Sholokhov's short story The Fate of a Man is not only that the writer was one of the first to deal with a few highly _-_-_
^^1^^ Russian Writers on Literature. 1939, Vol. 1, p. 281
257 important moments in the Second World War and to show the courage of Soviet people cast by the whirlwind of war into fascist captivity. The lasting value of The Fate of a Man is that it created the typical character of an average Soviet man with great poetic depth and generalised his traits to such a high degree, with such social pathos, that this one concrete fate became ``a pearl of creation''.In this story Sholokhov depicted with great conviction the hard fate of a Russian who bore on his shoulders the full weight of the war and the hellish torture of fascist captivity, who suffered the death of his beloved wife and children, buried his last son in foreign soil and yet remained a true Soviet man, capable of peaceful labour and tender affection for an orphaned child.
The figure of Andrey Sokolov, a man of exceptional spiritual strength, beauty, and nobility, is portrayed with great clarity and mastery. In revealing Sokolov's fate Sholokhov. achieved an amazingly organic fusion of the thoughts, feelings, psychological and moral qualities of Soviet man in the individual concrete figure of his hero. The character is not idealised or ``prettied-up'' in the slightest but is successful because of the poetic devices used and, not least, because of the narrator-hero's highly individual and expressive speech-pattern.
Andrey Sokolov embodies the best traits of the Russian national character, its optimism, patience and endurance, courage and firmness, spiritual purity, magnanimity and Russian humour, its love for the right word at the right moment. In this respect Andrey Sokolov is similar to Nekrasov's characters and to other outstanding figures in Russian literature. Yet he remains our contemporary, an active, conscious defender of his Homeland.
A typical character in art always bears the stamp of his time, of the particular qualities in his given historical period and in that particular moment. There can be no living characters without these qualities, for man always exists in time and in space. These characteristics of a given time and place, combined in one given character, are also the true embodiment of a new, sometimes an entire society, people, era, class, and group of people.
We have emphasised the basic principles of Marxist aesthetics concerning the typical in art as a unique dialectical unity of the universal and the individual in an attempt to counter the resolution of this problem in contemporary bourgeois aesthetics and in modernist art.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that there are no concepts from classical aesthetics that meet with such resistance in modernist art and aesthetics as ``the typical'', ``the hero'', and 258 ``character''. These concepts are declared at the outset to be outmoded and in disagreement with the new artistic thinking required by our dynamic century.
Contemporary theories of ``the anti-novel'', ``the anti-drama'', and ``the anti-hero" are based in the first instance on negation of the typical character as the organising principle of artistic creation.
The real situation in art and aesthetics disproves any attempt to bury an aesthetics based on characters. What is more, it would be no exaggeration to say that the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century, Ernest Hemingway, Lion Feuchtwanger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Friedrich Durrenmatt, and other realistic writers, especially the representatives of socialist realism, contributed something new to the concept of the typical character. The work of Gorky, Sholokhov, Mayakovsky, Brecht and other writers expresses a new concept of personality in the contemporary world and embodies an entirely new type of relationship between an individual personality and society. It is precisely these basic problems of man and his objective situation in society that are reflected in the new range of characters. The typical character has therefore remained a contemporary problem of burning importance, a criterion of humanism and anti-humanism in art, and the point of departure for setting the boundaries between realism and modernism.
Nevertheless one must not focus exclusively on this methodological watershed, even if it is of first importance in formulating the differences between realism and modernism. It is no less important or difficult to observe genuinely new tendencies in twentieth century art and to clarify the real issues set by the art of our time. No matter how profoundly and diversely the problem of character has been treated in the aesthetic systems of the past, the twentieth century has advanced new, unresolved aspects of this fundamental problem and made it even more topical.
The basic meaning of and primary relationship between the typical and the individual remain the same, but new artistic treatment of typical characters requires a new and contemporary interpretation from the point of view both of concrete historical content and of research into new forms and devices of artistic expressiveness.
The most fruitful prospects for the resolution of this problem are to be found in socialist realist art which follows in the great variety of formal and stylistic traditions inherited from the art of the past. Brecht's audacious and profoundly innovative art, for example, was based on an extremely broad range of traditions and on a contemporary interpretation of types drawn from world classics. 259 Brecht's creative path, given direction by his intellectual and artistic searchings, led from symbolical, highly abstract and generalised forms to realistic forms, from Der gute Mann von Sezuan to the profoundly realistic Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, and proves that the psychological form of realistic art which requires typical characters in typical situations has found a way to develop further. Soviet art is continuing to develop along this path, as shown by Sholokhov's internationally known work and by the unique characters created by Vassily Shukshin, Vasil Bykov, Chinghiz Aitmatov and other writers.
[260] __ALPHA_LVL2__ SOCIALIST REALISM AS A CREATIVE PROCESSG. Yermash
__NOTE__ Author is above LVL heading in original.Art is one of the forms of man's creative activity. The artist's task is to create a work of art, but the creative meaning of artistic activity is greater than this. By stimulating the spiritual development of both man and society, art creates something new in reality itself. Nonetheless, art is frequently placed in opposition to life itself with the intention of reducing its participation in the revolutionary development of society.
The progressive forces of a society struggle to unite art with the revolutionary historical process; thus, socialist realism inherits and develops the progressive traditions of genuine art. As the method of Soviet art, socialist realism can only be described adequately by means of all the aesthetic categories. In the present essay we shall speak about only one of these categories---socialist realism as a type of creation.
An integral part of this method is social involvement and orientation around resolving social tasks by artistic means; this is the internal stimulus to the artist's creative process and it transforms his art from `purely' artistic activity into genuine creativity, i.e., into a factor in social construction and in man's spiritual and social development.
The essence ot genuine creativity is its actively progressive social role. Art actively participates in man's evolution; people draw spiritual sustenance from works of art inspired by progressive ideas and then, inspired by these works, take part in the task of social development. The chain `man-art-progress' cannot drop a single link without risking to destroy the system of progressive social development as a whole.
261In order to help transform life the artist must have a knowledge of life's many objective laws. Therefore, genuine artistic activity cannot be autonomous, alien to and independent of society, or purely formal. On the contrary, it grows out of the artist's contact with reality and is permeated by his striving to artistically assimilate this reality.
By his creative activity man most fully expresses his freedom and sovereignty, and his ability not only to reflect reality but also to transform it. Creation is the highest and most complex manifestation of man's spiritual and practical relationship to the world.
Socialist realism is a creative method. It postulates the active artistic assimilation of historical reality and the participation of art in the revolutionary transformation of this reality by specifically artistic means.
Speaking at the First Congress of Soviet Writers, Maxim Gorky emphasised that ``socialist realism proclaims that life is action, creativity."^^1^^ More recently, Mikhail Sholokhov also spoke about this particular quality of socialist art in his Nobel Prize speech:
``I am speaking of the realism that expresses the idea of life's rejuvenation, its refashioning for the good of mankind.... Its specific feature is a view of the world that rejects mere contemplation of or retreat from reality, and calls to battle for the progress of mankind...."^^2^^
The art which is linked to socialist experience and to the practice of revolutionary transformation has opened up a new spiritual and artistic sphere which is continuing to expand and to develop new strength. Socialist experience is now not only the experience of class struggle but also the experience of triumph by the working masses in creating a developed socialist society; this experience does not belong to one nation only but is an ever-expanding international experience encompassing different countries and continents. Art throughout the world is linked to the present-day revolutionary process.
The Soviet working class and the Communist Party are guided in their activity by the scientific Marxist outlook and by the Marxist theory of the revolutionary transformation of social relations. This outlook greatly enriches Soviet socialist art, enabling it to penetrate into the objective essence of reality and consolidate its social function. Of course, to create a work which can have a deeply _-_-_
^^1^^ Socialist Realism in Literature and Art. A Collection of Articles, Moscow, 1971, p. 52 (in Russian)
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 87
262 progressive effect on man and society and become a very real factor of progress is a complex task, but one which can nonetheless be resolved by genuine art.The task of linking art with the revolutionary struggle of the working class was defined and argued by Lenin in his article ``Party Organisation and Party Literature''. Lenin wrote: ``We are faced with a new and difficult task. But it is a noble and greatful one---to organise a broad, multiform and varied literature inseparably linked with the Social-Democratic working-class movement."^^1^^
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century many representatives of critical realism continued to draw inspiration from a way of life which was fast disappearing: the poetry of nobility's ``country seats'', the uniqueness of village life, and so on. Other aesthetic currents counterposed art to reality and poeticised an escape from reality. The creative activity of the founders of socialist realism, and above all, Maxim Gorky, was directed towards artistic assimilation of the new and revolutionary processes taking shape in reality.
The historical quality and artistic advantage of socialist realism consists in the fact that it has linked itself to a revolutionary, historically progressive and genuinely creative social movement and adopted a communist world outlook which reflected most accurately then and continues to reflect now the real historical perspectives of social development.
To artistically assimilate socialist reality was a new creative problem which inspired the finest artists.
After the October Revolution, when a new socio-historical reality permeated by the constructive activity of the workers, peasants, and all labouring masses arose, Soviet artists devoted themselves to assimilating the characteristics of socialist reality and to affirming its moral and philosophical ideals and aesthetic values.
This movement achieved unusual breadth. Maxim Gorky, for instance, inspired writers to search and to discover new things by his own personal example---by his travels throughout the Soviet Union and by his series of sketches about the new work being done by the Caspian oil-riggers and by Armenian peasants. In his later years he organised the journal Our Achievements and began publication of a series of books entitled People of the Second FiveYear Plan in which the processes of socialist development found their first artistic generalisation.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 49
263Creativity is sometimes considered to consist only of the invention of a new manner of writing. But socialist realism resolves much deeper creative tasks. The artist guided by socialist realism must discover what is genuinely new and progressive in the depths of complex and contradictory reality; he must understand the laws of social movements; he must possess the strength and courage to tight for the affirmation of his ideals; he must possess great talent in order to find effective artistic means (language, form, images) with which to affirm the pre-eminence of the socialist and communist principles of life and world outlook, of the new morality and new standards of tastes.
A lesser art, one which only invents a new manner of writing, is incompatible with creative tasks of such scope and complexity. True art requires higher inspiration, great effort and a marked talent.
The founders of socialist realism, such as Gorky, Mayakovsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Vera Mukhina, Boris Johansson-Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and Isaac Dunayevsky were artistic giants, accomplished and innovative creators. Their discoveries defined the direction in which socialist realist art developed; in the Soviet Union this art continues to grow and to reveal its potential, to show great national and individual diversity, and to manifest its dynamism and capacity for renewal. The creative potential of this art cannot be compared with the'ebb and flow of mosaic trends of modernistic art which sometimes leave valuable cultural deposits, but ones which are only temporary and incomplete.
Socialist realism is a profound and all-encompassing creative process, inexhaustible because it is linked to historically progressive social practice and is saturated with the content, goals, images and ideas of this practice.
Romain Rolland was attracted by socialist realism's energetic and hardy character, and he wrote of it: ``In my research into socialist realism I want to show its renewal of subjects and characters, its harmonious health, and its mighty power."^^1^^
Given current conditions, socialist realism is going through a new stage of development in which it is expanding and deepening its contact with reality, as well as actively dealing with the vital problems of our time.
A profound and scientific study of the functioning of objective laws of contemporary social development in all spheres of social activity has been undertaken by Soviet scholars. If socialist realist art does not take part in this study then it will fall behind the _-_-_
^^1^^ R. Rolland, Memoirs. Moscow, 1966, p. 452 (in Russian)
264 other forms of spiritual experience and become isolated. It is noteworthy that Soviet painters, sculptors, and graphic designers are now willingly participating in cultural life at the most important new construction projects of the Ninth Five-Year Plan. This feeling of personal participation in the process of communist construction, the enrichment of art by direct impressions from life, the act of entering into the very essence of reality and into people's lives---all this has enormous importance for the development of art.The changes taking place in contemporary Soviet life are not only in the social, economic and political spheres but also in the spiritual life of the people who are building communism. Changes are taking place in people's opinions, tastes, moral standards and ideals, and in their ideas and feelings. The moral stimulus to work for society is becoming stronger, as is the sense of Soviet patriotism and internationalism. Man's spiritual life is being imbued with a new meaning. Present-day socialist realism is particularly interested in man's spiritual life and is attempting to analyse complex psychological processes. This is particularly important now that the attention of Soviet society is fixed on the problems of the communist education and harmonious development of the individual.
Scholars of Soviet literature have noticed the deepening and enrichment of its social and psychological content. The most complex aspects of the human spirit have become the object of artistic enquiry---not only people's thoughts and opinions, feelings and experiences, but also the imagination, the memory, and the subconscious. The works of Sholokhov, Chinghiz Aitmatov, and Sergei Zalygin have dealt with the spiritual and psychological traits of many types of people from a socialist background.
The centre of attention in contemporary Soviet art is the theme of work and, above all, the theme of the working class. The working class is the creator of not only the material values, but also the spiritual values of contemporary life. Advanced moral standards emerge in working collectives and it is here that modern and humane relations among men are formed: this is a rich source for the creation of the most contemporary works of art--- contemporary not only in form but also in content. Soviet artists and writers are faced with the enormously responsible task of reflecting the multiform activity and' spiritual culture of a developed socialist society. This is a very difficult and complex artistic task. In this connection Sholokhov remarked in his speech at the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, speaking of the visible traits of communist transformation, that 265 literary success in this area was ``not as great as both readers and writers might desire''. Art arising from socialist experience is moving forward, but it can only do so through searching, discovering, and by resolving the most complex creative tasks.
In order to depict contemporary life the writer must be able to conceptualise new processes and phenomena never before portrayed in art. This is an artistic problem for the artist seeking to go beyond a simple and unimaginative reproduction of ``life's flow''. Art must offer a creative interpretation of life, otherwise it becomes nothing more than a mirror reflecting what is in front of it, or it becomes simple formalism.
Socialist realist artists share a common body of ideas but this does not mean that their work is all the same. A Marxist-Leninist world outlook provides the type of methodological basis which makes it possible for art to grasp the essence of a wide variety of concrete processes. The conceptualisation of life's phenomena and its end result---the ideological and philosophical content of a work of art---grow out of the individual characteristics of the thought processes of the artist capable of comprehending all the new phenomena and aspects of contemporary life.
The methodological principle underlying socialist realism is its historicism, a concrete perception of reality in which separate phenomena are seen as socially interconnected and conditioned, in the light of their historical significance---a perception which takes each individual element as part of the whole and reveals the social background and historical scale of facts. For instance, the Soviet writer Sergei Zalygin has said that the artist ``is always pulled in two directions, always moves in two different orbits: the contemporary and the historical''.^^1^^ Thus, facts don't exist for the writer as isolated fragments of life, but rather each fact is a link in the historical chain, one part or one aspect of the social whole. The task of a creative artist, adhering to the principle of socialist realism, is to reveal the historical meaning and social interconnections of phenomena.
The opponents of socialist realism often imagine that writing from a class and party position excludes a personal attitude to life and makes creative thinking an impersonal phenomenon, but this is an artificial dilemma. Among the founders of socialist realism are Gorky and Mayakovsky, both writers who consistently wrote from a position of partisanship but were nevertheless two entirely different personalities. Genuinely creative thought is a result of _-_-_
^^1^^ S. Zalygin, ``Writer and Tradition" in:Vopmsy lileratury No. 5, 1972, p. 151
266 discovering and giving meaning to new aspects of life and requires talent and an exceptionally strong and active mind as well.Some foreign theorists consider the most valuable characteristic of art to be its critical attitude towards reality and they discuss this concept in relation to socialist art. This theory, however, tends to undervalue the creative character of the art of socialist realism.
A creative attitude of man towards reality is impossible without negation, but art cannot contain only negation. The summit of artistic creation is the discovery of what is new and progressive, something that can be opposed, by virtue of its greater perfection and adaptation to reality, to that which is out-moded, antihumane, and simply bad. The fact that art reflects and elevates progressive elements in reality gives it great importance in communist education and in the revolutionary transformation of society. The practical social significance of the process of artistic creativity lies in its emphasis on what is progressive. This does not mean, however, emphasis only on what is more rational but also on what is more real and valid, i. e., a realistic goal for society or real progress.
That art criticises what is bad and affirms what is progressive is due to the dialectic of reality itself. Lenin wrote that ``if any social phenomenon is examined in its process of development, relics of the past, foundations of the present and germs of the future will always be discovered in it...."^^1^^
The building of communism is a deeply revolutionary process. The real essence of art is a revolutionary view of the world and the struggle for what is new and progressive; the genuinely creative task of art, its active striving to participate in the communist transformation of society and of man, arises from this quality.
A profound knowledge of reality and a genuinely scientific view of the world is required of the artist if he is to affirm the new and better elements in life; he also needs talent, imagination, fantasy, and an instinctive sense for imagery and prediction.
The most outstanding examples of Soviet art clearly possess the historical optimism of a communist world outlook and a strength and talent in their affirmation of new and better elements in society. This is, however, a difficult creative problem which not every artist has been able to solve.
The artist's own creative make-up gives his art two distinct aspects: the objective aspect and the subjective aspect. Nevertheless, these two aspects are interconnected. Subject and object stand in a dialectical relation to each other and this relation is the _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 1, p. 179
267 very basis of the creative process. Realistic art grows out of the artist's interaction with objective reality at all levels of the creative process.Contemporary Soviet psychology is researching the mechanism of creative thinking in great detail. This research shows the organic connection in the haman consciousness between the creative faculties and reflection of life's objective characteristics and laws.
Aesthetics has given a great deal of attention to the problem of whether the artist himself, as an individual, can be a subject for artistic consideration. Can the artist's inner world be an object of examination? Can art be the expression of this individual inner world?
The artist himself, his life and his inner world can be part of the range of questions which properly form the subject of artistic enquiry, but only part, not the whole. External, objective reality is the most important and primary subject for the artist.
This is so, firstly, because the artist's life and inner world are only a small part of the infinite variety of the world, social structures, and mankind as a whole---all that makes up objective reality. To restrict the subject of art to one small part of reality would be to narrow its creative range and to impoverish its content.-Secondly, the artist's personal characteristics and thought processes are, after all, conditioned by external reality.
We do not wish to deny the significance of self-analysis by the artist in the creative process. Inasmuch as the most important subject for art is man himself, the artist's self-analysis can be one source of understanding reality, social structures, and man in general. However, self-analysis is not sufficient in itself to be a subject for art and cannot replace an analysis of life in its entirety.
All of these points are organically linked with the transformational function of art (which has precedence over all other functions), with the concept of art as an element in the building of a communist society, and with the principle of the national character of art. Lertin said that the workers and peasants ``are entitled to real great art''.^^1^^
Socialist realist aesthetics examines the problem of artistic form in the light of these principles. The decisive factor here is, again, that socialist realist art is directed towards assimilating contemporary revolutionary social experience.
The current stage of development in socialist realism is characterised by the fact that no one- artistic form is given _-_-_
^^1^^ Clara Zetkin, ``My Recollections of Lenin" in: V.I. Lenin. On Literature and Art, Moscow, 1970, p. 253
268 absolute precedence. Instead, a broad artistic ideal is developing which draws on an endless variety of form, takes into account a variety of specific national characteristics, individual searchings, and new means of artistic expression.Lenin's article ``Party Organisation and Party Literature" which contains the basis of the socialist realist theory of art, states that ``greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy, form and content''.^^1^^
Socialist realist art's creative approach to form is continuing to develop, but one must remember what is most important for the creative method of socialist realism. Formal structure cannot exist as an end in itself. A purely formal task is much more elementary than the search for artistic forms capable of expressing a complex content. Genuine artists search for this type of form because their art is directed towards the people as a whole and based on social reality. Because of this, the artist's search for the appropriate form acquires far greater significance. It is not enough to invent a new formal method, it is necessary to find worthwhile content and forms of aesthetic value.
Socialist realism is principally distinguished from modernistic tendencies in contemporary art by its attempt to influence reality for the better through art. Genuine art is akin to the revolutionary practice of transforming the world. Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote in his essay ``Music and Revolution" that ``music and revolution are deeply related"^^2^^ and this applies to all forms of genuinely creative art.
_-_-_^^1^^ V. 1. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 46
~^^2^^A. V. Lunacharsky, In the World of Music, Moscow, 1958, p. 123 (in Russian)
[269] __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END] ~ [270]REQUEST TO READERS~
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[271]The collection, MarxistLeninist Aesthetics and Life, introduces the Soviet science of aesthetics to the international public. The main theme of the book is the relationship between socialist art and life. Among the subjects treated is the imagery of art, the criteria of the aesthetic appraisal, the tasks of aesthetic education and the philosophical conceptualisation of reality by Soviet writers and artists. The collection is brought out for the Eighth International Congress of Aesthetics.
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