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p In terms of beauty a work of art is far inferior to the creations of nature, ll was not from people’s striving to remove the flaws of the beautiful as it exists in reality that art arose. Chernyshevsky is firmly convinced of this. But if we grant that he is right, we are inevitably confronted by the question of where people got the idea of the superiority of works of art to creations of nature from. Chernyshevsky foresees this inevitable question and attempts to answer it.

p In general man is inclined to appreciate difficult tasks and rare things. Thus, for example, we, Russians, are not at all surprised when Frenchmen speak French well: it is not difficult for them to do so. But we are readily surprised by a foreigner who speaks the language well. Actually the foreigner is probably never compared with the French in this respect; but we are very willing to forgive him the mistakes in his French and do not even notice them at all. We are not impartial judges in this case either. We are won over by our realisation of the difficulty which the foreigner has overcome. We find the same in the relationship of aesthetics to the creations of nature and art; the slightest real or apparent flaw in a work of nature, and aestheticians pounce 252 on it, are shocked by it, and ready to forget all merits of the work, all its beauty: and indeed should they be valued, when they have appeared without the slightest effort! A work of art may have the same flaw magnified a hundred times, cruder and surrounded by hundreds of other flaws, and we do not see all of tliis, or if we see it, we forgive it and exclaim: there are spots even on the snn!... Chernyshevsky believes that we do well to appreciate the difficulty of a task. But he demands justice. "We must also not forget the essential, intrinsic merit, which is independent of the difficulty; we become positively unjust when we prefer difficulty of execution to merit of execution.” In order to show how highly difficulty of execution is valued and how little that which comes of itself is appreciated. Chernyshevsky refers to daguerreotype portraits. "Among them we find many that are not only true, but also convey facial expression perfectly. Do we value them? It would be strange to hear anyone praise daguevreotype portraits."

p Another source of our preference for works of art is the fact that they are made by man. They bear witness to human abilities, and therefore we treasure them. "All peoples except the French are well aware that there is a vast distance between Corneille or Racine and Shakespeare; but the French still compare them today; it is hard to reach the point of realising that ’ours is not quite as good’. There are very many Russians who readily maintain that Pushkin is one of the world’s greatest poets; there are even people who think that he is better than Byron: so highly does a man rate his own. Just as a people exaggerates the merit of its own poets, so man in general exaggerates the merit of poetry in general."

p The third cause of our preference for art lies in the fact that it flatters our artificial tastes. We understand today how artificial were the customs, habits and whole mode of thought in the seventeenth century; today we are closer to nature, we understand and value it more, but we are still very remote from it and still infected with artificiality. Everything about us is artificial, from our dress to our food, which is seasoned with all manner of spices that change its natural taste entirely. Works of art flatter our love of artificiality, and this is why we prefer them to the creations of nature.

p The first two causes of our preference for works of art deserve respect, according to Chernyshevsky, because they are natural: "how can man fail to respect human* labour, how can he not love man, not value works that testify to human intelligence and strength?" But with regard to the third cause, he considers this reprehensible, objecting to the fact that works of art flatter our petty requirements that proceed from love of artificiality. Chernyshevsky does not wish to examine the question as to how 253 fond we still are of "cleaning up" nature; he says that this would involve him in excessively long discussions of what is “dirt” and to what extent it is permissible in works of art. "But to this day there prevails in works of art a petty (finish) of detail, the aim of which is not to being the details into harmony with the spirit of the whole, but merely to make each of them more interesting or beautiful nearly always to the detriment of the general impression of the work, its authenticity and naturalness. There prevails a petty striving for effect in individual words, individual phrases and whole episodes, the depicting of people and events in colours that are striking, but not entirely natural. A work of art is pettier than that which we see in life and in nature, and at the same time more spectacular—how then can one help accepting the opinion that it is more beautiful than real nature and life, in which there is so little artificiality and which do not seek to arouse our interest?" An artificially developed person has many artificial, petty and often fantastically distorted requirements, which it would be more correct to call whims. To pander to a person’s whims certainly does not mean to satisfy his needs, among which pride of place belongs to his need for truth.

p Chernyshevsky points to several other causes of the preference for art to reality. We shall not list them here, but shall confine ourselves to the remark that all of them, in his opinion, only explain but do not justify this preference. In disagreeing with the view that art should be given precedence over reality. Chernyshevsky naturally could not agree with the idealist view, prevalent in his day, of the needs that gave rise to art and of its purpose. The idealists said that man had an irresistible striving for the beautiful, but was unable to find that which was truly beautiful in objective reality: the idea of the beautiful, which wa*not realised in objective reality, was realised in works of art. Chernyshevsky objects to this that if by the beautiful we mean perfect harmony between the idea and form, we must deduce from the striving for the beautiful not art in particular, but all man’s activity in general, the basic principle of which is the complete realisation of a certain idea. "The striving for the unity of the idea and the image is the formal basis of all technique, the desire to understand and improve all works or articles.” Chernyshevsky maintains that by the beautiful one should understand that in which man sees life. Hence he draws what is for him the obvious conclusion that the striving for the beautiful leads to joyous love for all that is alive and that this striving is fully satisfied by living reality. "If works of art had arisen as a consequence of our striving for perfection and our disdain for all that is imperfect, man would long ago have had to abandon all striving for art as fruitless, because there is no perfection in 254 works of art; he who is dissatisfied with real heauty can be oven less satisfied with the heauty created by art.” While disagreeing with the idealist explanation of the purpose of art. Chcrnyshevsky believes nevertheless that it contains allusions to the correct interpretation of the matter.

p The idealists are right in saying that man is not satisfied by the beauty in reality, but they are wrong in their indication of the causes which give rise to his dissatisfaction. Chernyshevsky understands this question in a totally different way.

p When we admire the sea, it does not occur to us to want to add to or change the picture which it presents. "But not all people live near the sea. Many never have the chance to see it even once in their life, but they would like very much to feast their eyes on it—and it is for them that pictures showing the sea appear.” The aim of most works of art is to give an opportunity of becoming acquainted with reality to people who for some reason or other have not been able to become acquainted with it in fact. Art reproduces nature and life in the same way that an engraving reproduces a picture. "The engraving does not claim to be better than the picture, it is far inferior to it artistically. Similarly a work of art never attains the beauty or majesty of reality; but there is only one picture, it can be admired only by those who go to the gallery which it adorns; the engraving is sold in hundreds of copies all over the world, any person can admire it whenever he likes, without going out of his room, without getting up from his couch, without taking off his dressing gown; similarly an object that is beautiful in reality is not always accessible and not to everyone at that; reproduced (feebly, crudely, palely, it is true, but nevertheless reproduced) by art, it is accessible to everyone at all times."

p Chernyshevsky hastens to remark, however, that the words "art is the reproduction of reality" define only the formal principle of art. In order to define the essential content of art he reminds us that it is by no means confined to the sphere of the beautiful. Art embraces everything "in reality (in nature and life) that is of interest to man not as a scholar, but as an ordinary person”. The beautiful, the tragic and the comic are merely the three most definite elements of the multitude of elements on which the interest of human life depends. But why then is the beautiful regarded as the sole content of art? Only because the beautiful as the object of art is confused with beauty of form which is an essential quality of every work of art. Beauty of form is the product of the mutual harmony, the unity of the idea and the image. But this formal beauty does not, in Chernyshevsky’s opinion, constitute a feature that distinguishes works of art from the other branches of human activity. "A man’s actions always have an aim which constitutes the essence of his work; the merit of the 255 work itself is valued according to the degree to which our work corresponds to the aim which we wished to attain by it; all man’s works are judged according to the degree of perfection attained in their execution. This is a general law for handicraft, for industry, for scientific activity, etc. It applies to works of art as well.” The meaning of the words "harmony of the idea and the image" amounts to the simple idea that all work should be done well.

p We said above that apart from reproducing life, art has, according to Chernyshevsky. another purpose: the explaining of this life. Man, who is interested in the phenomena of life, cannot help judging them in some way or other. Therefore the artist too cannot refrain from pronouncing his judgment on the phenomena he portrays. Herein lies art’s oilier purpose, thanks to which "art becomes one of man’s moral motive forces”. The more conscious the artist’s attitude to the phenomena heportrays, the more be becomes a thinker and the more his works, while remaining in the sphere of art, acquire scientii’ic importance.

Summing up all that he has said in this connection. Chernyshevsky finally formulates his view of art as follows: "The essential purpose of art is to reproduce everything that is of interest to man in real life; very often, especially in poetic works, the explaining of life, judging of its phenomena, also comes to the fore."