Tolstoy

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Tolstoys Aesthetics

• The business of art consists precisely in
  making understandable and accessible that which
  might be incomprehensible and inaccessible in the
  form of reason 1081.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, 1828-1910
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Overview of Tolstoys Aesthetics

• A. What is Art?
• B. Aesthetic Experience.
• C. Aesthetic Value.
• D. Aesthetic Judgment.
• E. What is True and Great Art.
• F. Questions for Reflection.
• G. Bibliography.

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• His work, What is Art? developed over 15 years.
  It was published in 1897.
• His thoughts on art is very thoughtful, critical,
  and at times both novel and paradoxical.

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A. What is Art?

• In chapter 5 of What is Art? Tolstoy writes
• To call up in oneself a feeling once
  experienced and, having, called it up in oneself,
  to transmit it by means of movements, lines,
  colors, sounds, images expressed in words, so
  that others experience the same feeling-in this
  consists the activity of art. Art is that human
  activity which consists in ones person
  consciously transmitting to others, by certain
  external signs, the feelings he has experienced,
  and in others being infected by those feelings
  and experiencing them 539-40.

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B. Aesthetic Experience

• Tolstoy contends that aesthetic experience is the
  experiential union between the artist and the
  recipient it is a common bond of
  feeling.
• When in this state, the recipient feels as if the
  work is ones own and that what it expresses is
  what one longs to express it is a replication of
  emotion.

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B. Aesthetic Experience

• This quality of infectiousness is what
  distinguishes true art from its
  counterfeit.
• This sharing is almost involuntary, like
  radiation or an electrical spark
  16131.
• The stronger the infection (the replication of
  emotion), the more successful the art work is.
• For its instantaneous effects on the receiving
  end, then, every successful work of art must be
  painstakingly fine-tuned, bit by bit. Infection
  is a craft. Emerson, Tolstoys Aesthetics,
  239.

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A Sign or Filament
Notes The desire to share is almost
involuntary you cant help it. Even though it
begins with an electrical spark the sign
created is consciously structured.
This existential need creates the material
grounds for sharing the experience with another
person
Art begins with a personal experience so strong
that we FEEL the need to confirm it, call it up,
and fix it IN SIGNS.
1st Psychological Event
2nd Psychological Event
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A Sign
The Replication of Emotion
3rd Psychological Event
Aesthetic Experience occurs when there is a
common bond of feeling. The stronger the
infection, the more successful the art work is.
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Does the unity between people brought about by
the spark of infection result in loss of identity?

• Caryl Emerson notes
• The unity between people brought about by the
  spark of infection does not result in our
  amalgamation, loss of identity, or even
  necessarily in our casual agreement such unity
  is measured, above all, by an increase in mutual
  tolerance and love. Art destroys separation-but
  emphasizes individuality. What is more,
  infection by art is not some irreversible
  chemical fusion that takes place between two
  bodies once and for all. People are unified (and
  love is released) in exceptional moments pg.
  245.

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Does the unity between people brought about by
the spark of infection result in loss of identity?

• Caryl Emerson continues
• Although our organisms must be susceptible and
  receptive in a general way, of course, as with
  any infection we are not susceptible in the same
  away each time, nor for the same length of time.
  Since each person is unlike all others,
  Tolstoy writes, one persons feeling will be
  felt as particular for every other person, and
  the more particular the feeling is-the more
  deeply the artist has dipped into his own
  nature-the more heartfelt and sincere it will be
  (15122) pg. 245.

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C. Aesthetic Value 3 Conditions

• The extent of the infectiousness of the artwork
  reveals the extent of value
• 1. Primary value caught by recipient is
  sincerity.
• 2. The degree of individuality of the feeling
  transmitted.
• 3. The beauty (i.e., clarity) of expression.

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C. Aesthetic Value 3 Conditions

• 1st and Primary value is sincerity. It is a
  sincerity that is caught by recipient is
  sincerity.
• This value contradicts modern arts emphasis on
  art for art sake only.

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C. Aesthetic Value 3 Conditions

• 2nd Condition The degree of individuality of the
  feeling transmitted
• This value makes it improbable that exactly the
  same effects could be produced in some other
  way-something that instrumentalist theories are
  often accused of making possible.

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C. Aesthetic Value 3. Conditions

• 3rd Condition
• The beauty (i.e., clarity) of expression. How
  does the internal organization assist to this
  end? Tolstoy does not say.
• Remember, Tolstoy argues that ideas and feelings
  are separable, if not in their substance then at
  least in the treatment a person accords them-for
  ideas can be disputed and manipulated. In
  contrast, by the time we register a feeling, it
  has already occurred.

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D. 4-Fold Aesthetic Judgment
True
Counterfeit
Counterfeit
Good
Bad
True/Counterfeit Axis Standard of success is
simply communicative if it is true it infects.
The true artist is a conduit and
enabler. Good/Bad Axis Religious, reflecting an
ethical ideal endorsed by a certain people in a
given historical time or place, or universal,
accessible at all times to everyone in all
cultures, without exception 16131-32. There
are no institutional associations.
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Aesthetic Judgment
True
Counterfeit
1st device Mimesis or borrowing when they do
not have emotional experiences of their own. To
copy prior works in a passive mechanical way is
always bad.
1. The standard of success is simply
communicative if it is true, it infects
(replicates).
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Caryl Emerson notes

• The Russian word iskrennost (sincerity),
  Tolstoys central requirement for authentic art,
  is built off of iskra, a spark That which
  flashes momentarily and either catches fire or
  dies. The artistic effect either takes, or fails
  to take.
• Tolstoys Aesthetics, 244.

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Aesthetic Judgment
True
Counterfeit
2nd device To describe in photographic art
without concern for their spiritual or
transfiguring experience is also a counterfeit
(e.g., realistic art).
2. The replication of emotion in the recipient
must be immediate unmediated.
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Aesthetic Judgment
True
Counterfeit
3. The result of true art is to make us
experience an event of life more deeply, without
having to analyze it or struggle with it.
3rd device Do not convey feelings but strive
for a certain effect (e.g., horror stories,
erotica) crisis ethics (i.e., focus on murder,
crime which dull the cultivation of the practical
virtues of everyday living and downplay what is
more valuable.
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Aesthetic Judgment
True
Counterfeit
4th Device No ideas should be in art for
ratiocination interferes with infection for three
reasons a. Mental effort has to be applied to
determine message this diminishes infection or
replication of emotion. b. We have to guess about
the meaning of an artwork this divides rather
than unites the audience c. Those educated
fosters discrimination for those who dont have a
discerning learning ability/background.
Summary (3-fold) The standard of success is
simply communicative if it is true, it infects
The replication of emotion in the recipient must
be immediate unmediated. Its happy result is to
make us experience an event of life more deeply,
without having to analyze it or struggle with it.
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Consider the following

• The business of art, Tolstoy insists,
  consists precisely in making understandable and
  accessible that which might be incomprehensible
  and inaccessible in the form of reasoning
  (1081).
• The stronger the infection, the better the art
  is as art, regardless of its content-that is,
  independently of the worth of the feelings it
  conveys (15121).

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Consider the following

• Caryl Emerson notes
• True/counterfeit and good/bad these two axes
  of judgment must be applied to every human
  product that claims to be art. Tolstoy was aware
  of the difficulties involved in making aesthetic
  discriminations, especially for social classes
  whose tastes had been perverted. false works
  can superficially appear to be better
  constructed, more interesting and worthy than
  true ones 14114 While authentic (that is,
  contagious) bad art will always be around and
  inevitably will infect us, we should strive
  wherever possible to create conditions for the
  right sorts of infection to occur.

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E. What is Great and True Art?

• Great and true art must not stumble. It may of
  course show signs of conflict, grief,
  disappointment, failure, but it must not endorse
  a radical multi-directionality-that is, it cannot
  posit as its endpoint an evil or impossible
  paradox (that would be getting nowhere), no
  matter how swift, interesting, or well-crafted
  the journey.
• Caryl Emerson states in his Cambridge Companion
  article on Tolstoys Aesthetics, 238.

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E. What is Great and True Art?

• Emerson observes
• If a work of art portrays struggle, it must
  show us a way out. The responsibility of art to
  get us there, and where in fact that final
  place is, are among the most ancient concerns of
  moral philosophy. Tolstoy belongs with those
  philosophers who do not believe that art can be
  explained by a poetics.
• Caryl Emerson, Tolstoys Aesthetics, 238.

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E. What is Great and True Art?

• Emerson observes
• It is rather, an indispensable part of organic
  life, in Tolstoys literal understanding of that
  phrase it has life-bearing functions, whose
  proper metabolic activity is essential to the
  health of each individual organism and to the
  health of the social body as a whole. Art,
  Tolstoy writes, is the spiritual organ of human
  life, and it cannot be destroyed.
• Caryl Emerson, Tolstoys Aesthetics, 238.

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E. What is Great and True Art?

• 2. Great and true art are those pieces that
  express/conforms with the highest religious
  perceptions of our age the Christian ideal of
  the union and brotherhood of man as opposed to
  art which is socially divisive or elitist fails
  in its true function and so is counterfeit/bad
  art.
• Art that promotes hedonism does not survive this
  test.

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E. What is Great and True Art?

• Art is justified on moral grounds because moral
  values have supremacy over all others (this is
  his starting point). In fact, Tolstoy rejects art
  that it self-justifying or that its value is in
  any way self-evident. For Tolstoy, beauty has no
  objective worth and should never displace the
  demands of morality-for morality has a universal,
  common standard whereas beauty does not.
  Therefore, art that infects in a morally correct
  direction is good art.

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F. Questions for Reflection

• Should a theory of art presuppose a moral
  starting point and ultimate end or goal?
• If aesthetic experience is the experience of the
  recipient and artist being united through the art
  piece, then how does one evaluate the quality of
  infectiousness (which distinguishes true art from
  its counterfeit)? What does it mean to say the
  stronger the infection, the better the art, as
  art? How do we know this is right?

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F. Questions for Reflection

• Can mere replication of an emotion give rise to
  enough of those rich, differentiated relations
  and alternative worlds that are among arts most
  precious contributions to life?
• What does it mean to transmit a feeling to
  another person, with intent to infect? Feelings,
  after all, arise from private inner
  experience?
• Can emotions be confidently separated from
  thoughts? Certainly great works of art are an
  inspiring mix of both ideas and feelings?

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G. Bibliography

• A Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy, Edited by Donna
  Tussing Orwin (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
• A Companion to Aesthetics Blackwell Companions
  to Philosophy, edited by David Cooper (Malden,
  MA. Blackwell, 1992, 1995), 429-30.
• Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?, trans. Richard Pevear
  and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York Penguin
  Books, 1995).
• What is Art? and Essays on Art, trans. Aylmer
  Maude (Oxford Oxford University Press, 1930).