p Essential to the nature of the artistic image is a specific element of aesthetic emotionality. Emotional and rational elements, sensual and intellectual are inseparable and of necessity interwoven with each other: thought is expressed through emotions, feelings are vehicles for ideas.

p The unmistakable evidence of the enormous role played by emotion in the artistic image is even mistakenly used as an argument to show that art is rooted in nothing but human feelings. Even as clear-sighted an artist as Lev Tolstoy, when describing art and language as means of communication in his study What is Art? remarked that men convey their thoughts to each other by means of language and their feelings by means of art. It is difficult to imagine that the great artist upheld this view in the literal sense. In practice he made wider demands on art and held with justification that images should express not only sincerity of feeling and beauty of form but also a correct attitude to the subject portrayed. The demand for truthfulness and realism introduced ideas into the image. The ineptness of Tolstoy’s formula cited at the beginning of this paragraph was singled out long ago by Plekhanov. Reduction of the image to pure emotionality, and of art to a realm of pure feeling belittles the cognitive significance of thought expressed through images and links art with nothing more than immediate contemplation, stripping it of potential for profound penetration to the essence of life’s phenomena.

p Of course no absolute contrast should be drawn between logical thought and artistic thought, and logical elements should not be excluded from the image. Penetration to the essential features of phenomena involves abstract thought. It is part of the artistic assimilation of reality. Yet, as was pointed out earlier, when reality is reflected in images, thought does not follow in the wake of contemplation, but finds outlets in organic unity with the latter.

p Then comes the question as to whether we are justified in singling out the unity of feeling and thought in the image as its distinctive features. It should be borne in mind that emotional and rational factors go hand in hand not only in art, but also in other spheres of human activity.

p However emotionality in art is distinguished from emotionality in other spheres. Emotions are also present in the work of the scholar, but are not impregnated in the nature of logical concepts or scientific truths. There was deep love for all working people, hatred for all social inequalities and compassion for the oppressed in the hearts of Marx and Engels. However, the theory of scientific communism is the result of rigorous analytical activity of the mind. Its strength lies precisely in the fact that it reflects not emotions or desires, but scientifically substantiated laws of social development: this is what determines its lasting scientific value. When Soviet scientists calculated the orbits for flights to be underta^ ken by spacecraft, they were no doubt inspired by the grandeur of their task, but the calculations were accomplished not thanks to powerful emotional stimulus, but to sober reason.

p Lenin wrote that "there has never been, nor can there be, any human search for truth without ’human emotions’ ”.  [103•*  Here search is the operative word. In science emotion may well provide a stimulus in the search for the truth, in the formulation of concepts, but it is not an 104 ingredient of truths themselves. The main goal behind a scientific concept is to influence the mind, not the emotions of the reader; it is aimed at his logical, not his emotional faculties. It is not aimed at presenting the author’s mood or inner “make-up”, at expressing his attitude to his reader or his assessment of what he is expounding. The presence of value judgement characteristic of artistic language does not play a decisive role in scientific exposition. Meanwhile in art emotion is not a coincidental element in creation, not a factor accompanying the creation of a character, but an essential part of its content, an organic colouring of the ideas included and means of expression for the latter. The leading Soviet actor and director Samuil Mikhoels gave graphic expression to this idea when he said that an artist should possess the head of a man, heart of a woman and spirited energy of a child.

p Artistic images must of necessity contain an emotional ingredient and concentrate ideas through intense emotions: they make a direct appeal to man’s feelings and for this reason always arouse an emotional response such as love or hate, sympathy or antipathy, joy or sadness, laughter or tears.

p To use Plekhanov’s phrase, art is always "saturated with lyricism". If robbed of that lyricism and passionate emotional tension, its impact will disappear and art thus be transformed into dry narrative. The reader senses strong patriotic fervour behind the comings and goings of Serpilin and Sintsov in Konstantin Simonov’s novel, The Living and the Dead; the expression on the face of the woman meeting her invalided husband on his return from the war in the film Ballad of a Soldier expresses the pain of a tortured heart; the cry of the woman who has just buried her child, rends the terrible silence on the Naked Island in the Japanese film of the same name, echoing her despair; the silence of Dmitri Karamazov as he sinks to his knees marks the highpoint of the torment tearing his soul; the nonconformity of Emma Bovary reflects her confusion and acute suffering; Hamlet’s "To 105 be or not to be" epitomises the infinite tension of men’s emotional life. Without his emotionality no character can come into its own with all its wealth of colour, and any picture would be insipid and inexpressive.

p In certain works on aesthetics and theatrical technique the idea is put forward that Brecht’s theory of stage art rejects emotionality. In this connection attention is drawn to the fact that all Brecht’s theoretical principles, and still more so his artistic writings are of an openly tendentious character, are socially and politically committed.

p Of course, Brecht did not formulate these principles in order to strip art of emotionality. His struggle against exaggerated emotionality in the theatre was the result of specific historical circumstances effecting German society in the twenties and early thirties. For Brecht—the politician and artist—art was always first and foremost a weapon for political struggle. He demanded from art that it make men think. Brecht’s work was in fact so intensely thought-provoking that it also generated a powerful emotional impact. For Brecht the all-important question was not: feelings or ideas? He was against both false feelings and false ideas. What he was after was sincere emotion side-by-side with sincere ideas. Brecht himself was to write that emotional experience was an essential part of art, but it should always be motivated emotion.

p Brecht held that the contradiction between reason and emotion only existed in the heads of unreasonable people, stressing that our feelings demand sustained effort of reason, while at the same time reason ennobles our emotions. Brecht’s radically new approach to the theatre and aesthetic theory present man not only as a product of his destiny, but also as the shaper of that destiny. He was to repeat on several occasions that man’s destiny was man himself. He therefore placed on the characters in his plays a personal responsibility; he championed action and rallied men to the struggle. This is why Brecht was such an energetic opponent of the kind of theatre that gave a light jolt to flabby emotions and lightly agitated slackened nerves. He campaigned against this debilitating 106 emotionality that smothers audiences in "golden dreams", calling on the theatre to help bring experience of struggle within reach of all and make justice a passion.

p In order to achieve a high degree of emotional expressiveness a writer, artist or actor assumes the identity of his characters, so to speak, starts to live through their ideas and feelings. In some degree a reader or beholder undergoes a -similar transformation. The well-known Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky who made a detailed study of the creative process, remarked that for him writing became not merely an occupation, but his life’s work, his whole way of life. "I often caught myself living within the world of my current novel or story." Kuprin regretted that he could not become a horse, plant or fish for a few days. He was anxious to know what it felt like to be a woman, to experience giving birth. In The Green Hills of Africa Hemingway tells us how at night he once experienced all that a wounded elk must experience starting from the initial impact of the bullet right up until the end of his agony. Gorky wrote in his time: "The work of a writer is probably more difficult than the work of an academic, a zoologist, for instance. A scientist studying a sheep does not have to imagine himself as a sheep, while a writer of generous spirit has to imagine himself as a miser, an unselfish writer has to conjure up the emotions of a self-seeking go-getter, or a weak-willed writer needs to create a convincing picture of a man of strong will.”  [106•* 

p The life of a character and the life of its creator are inseparable. Any writer lives the life of his characters to a greater or lesser extent. The very nature of our artistic apprehension of life is such that a writer when fashioning characters needs to put to music not just words, but his very heart.

p An image which is the vehicle of a lofty message is convincing when we sense behind it an artist for whom, 107 to use Rodin’s words, the most important thing in life is to be emotionally involved, to love, to hope, to know suspense and to live.

While acknowledging the enormous role that emotionality plays in art it should not be accorded paramount importance. Some writers and critics would have us do this, but such an approach is false. Sincerity of feeling taken on its own is not the decisive criterion for realism, but rather truthfulness. Adherents of modernist aesthetics start out from the contention that truthfulness is no more than a "synonym for sincerity". This does not seem right. The creator of a character can be sincere even in his delusions. Making the expression of emotion the principal goal in art is to depart from the realist path, to abandon the most important realist criteria and succumb to the principles of modernist aesthetics. Aestheticians of this school regard art not as a reflection of life but merely as the artist’s emotional relationship to life, regardless of whether or not this relationship leads to truth or a distortion of reality. Realist aesthetics on the other hand underlines that truthfulness and commitment are the essential components of a reflection of life through images, while at the same time acknowledging the tremendous importance of emotionality without giving it precedence over all else.