It is not easy to analyze the elements of art. But those who have attempted it trace it back to various sources, among them the fine sensibility that makes the artist's soul something like a polished mirror in which the subtlest movements and forms are reflected, and which responds easily to every stimulus. Yet keenness of feeling — for all its importance — is only a secondary condition of the artistic nature; some have gone so far as to deny it — these are the extremists — even claiming that art accords better with cold temperaments; whence women were, in Rousseau's claim, "an inartistic sex, not being marked by quickness of impression and intensity of temperament."
But there is a difference between the agitated, nervous, tumultuous nature and that quickness of response which makes its possessor, for all his calm, keen of sense and penetrating of sight, feeling what others do not feel and seeing what is not seen. This feeling stirs in him impressions and dreams and novel fancies, and the strong, creative imagination becomes a fundamental factor in the genesis of art. This no one has ventured to deny.
The psychologists have views worthy of attention in analyzing the factors of art. They trace it back to psychic disturbances which the person was forced to suppress or subdue, because circumstances prevented him from expressing them in a natural way; so they sank into the depths of his unconscious and remained there in a state of withdrawal and concealment, until something happened to awaken them, and they reappeared in the form of artistic material. In other words, art is in their view a diversion of the instincts into a new channel, and a turning away from reality toward imagination. The suppressed inclinations may be love, or pain, or envy, or hatred, or deprivation, or a violent attachment, or a latent enmity toward a friend or relative — inclinations their possessor is compelled to subdue or suppress because they run counter to convention, or for other reasons; so they remain in his unconscious in the form of latent complexes,
and if they meet in him the artistic nature, they find themselves an outlet in art — that is, in a new garb and a veiled form.
On this basis they analyze Rousseau's novel "La Nouvelle Héloïse" as an outlet for inclinations latent in his soul: revolt against the barriers standing between the classes, and the desire to marry into the aristocracy. That is why he made the girl Julie, of noble origin, fall passionately in love with her tutor of lowly origin, who was a symbol of the writer himself; and thereby Rousseau substituted imagination for reality, and crossed, in his story, the bounds of convention and tradition where he could not do so in tangible reality.
This interpretation does not seem strange when we review the lives of certain poets and artists and observe that art was a vent for their subdued feelings and pains. Al-Mutanabbi's rancor against people in his poetry is the result of the failure and deprivation he suffered in his struggle. Ibn al-Rumi's masked satire is an outlet for his psychic upheavals, which would have threatened him with madness had he not found a vent for them in poetry. Hence too we see the legends of the ancients teeming with stories of poor men who suddenly became kings or possessors of vast fortunes — pointing to hidden inclinations in the depths of the storyteller's soul, which he expressed through the imagination he substituted for saddening reality, thereby satisfying himself and satisfying his hearers, who concealed the same inclinations and dreams in their hearts.
Nor are the artist's feelings and experiences alone the source of his art; he finds rich nourishment for it in folk tales and the legends of the past. It is as if the artist, in certain circumstances of his life, lives through phases of the people's primitive life,
re-enacting the past in his stories and his representations, guarding among his people the old memories, awakening the racial inclinations, and clothing the old in an elegant robe of splendor and majesty. In this, art is a powerful factor in the continuance of the past, the nourishing of national feelings, and the kindling of souls with the fire of fidelity to the ancestors, the worship of traditions, and the sanctification of memories. This reminds us of the poet d'Annunzio's mania and his national ardor when he set out at the head of an Italian detachment and occupied the city of Fiume. It likewise brings back to our minds the picture of the pre-Islamic poets and the storytellers and reciters who were, among their people, the keepers of the past, reviving it in bright colors, or who stood at the head of tribal revolts and wars, kindling the fires of heroism and desperate valor in the breasts of the warriors.
Imitation, too, plays its part in the creation of art. However much the artist inclines toward individuality and originality in his style, he can free himself only in rare instances from the influence of the ancients and the authority of their styles. This factor has had its far-reaching effect on Arabic literature, most of which was founded on imitating the ancients and following in their tracks. Nor are the men of letters of the Arabs alone in this; the classicists, and those who followed their course in the lands of the West, share it with them.
I wish to arrive, from this introduction to the analysis of the elements of art, at the statement that art, in its general origins, is a backward-looking phenomenon that feeds on the old and lives by it. Its substance is feeling and instinct, which count as humanity's oldest characteristics — indeed its distinguishing mark in the periods of its childhood and in its primitive states, since man shares them with the dumb beast. That is why instinct is the mainstay of the child's life, ruling him before the growth of his mental faculties. Hence the scholars' saying that poetry is older than prose, because the former is the