A Review of the Book "Aesthetic Criticism"

It may seem strange that a person should be charged with reviewing a work of his own, yet it is no rare occurrence; for if some authors — especially those given over to artistic composition — are unable to criticize what they write, either because they have not practiced the art of criticism or because they have no wish to, the authors of scholarly studies, having turned their subject over back to front and spent years in studying it, can point to the weak spots in what they have written and explain what they meant to reinforce and to press home in presenting it, in a way that neither the superficial reader nor the hasty critic can attain.

The book consists of two distinct parts: the first, general studies in what is called aesthetic — or "esthetic" — criticism; the second, the application of the principles of this inquiry to the criticism we find among the critics of the Arabs.

"Art" is one of those vague terms among the educated as among the common people. So too the word "beauty." In the book there is an attempt to define each of the two terms, as follows:

Art — and we mean here fine art — appears to us under at least six forms: poetry, music, painting, dance, sculpture, and architecture. All these arts, despite their differences, admit of a single definition: they are the work of man and the product of his mind, and the human element in them makes them nearer to the soul than the models of nature. A work of art must be marked by the quality of individuality and originality for its maker to be called an artist. This means distinguishing between the musician who creates melodies and the performer who transmits them: the first is an artist, the second an imitator or a craftsman. Likewise one distinguishes between the creator or originator of fashions and the tailor who makes them; between the poet and the versifier; between the inventor of the forms of the dance and the amateur or professional dancer; between the sculptor who creates carved figures and the other who copies from him. Creation in art is an essential condition, and on this basis we say that art is free, personal expression — that is, bound by no rule or model. The second condition is that the work of art be a source of pleasure, delight, and contentment to whoever views and savors it, quite apart from its practical usefulness. A piece of music, for instance, has an intrinsic aesthetic value separate from its practical use in setting an army on the march or opening a ceremony.

Having attempted to define art, it becomes easy for us to define beauty, for the first is one of the manifestations of the second. The beautiful is whatever pleases the beholder or the listener or the person of taste, without prior rule or ulterior purpose. And every person of some culture can perceive the beautiful, since it has no fixed rule but appears in different forms. It appears in nature in the forms of loveliness present in man, animal, and plant; in the harmony of their shapes, the purity of their colors, and the undulation of their lines; in the singing of birds, the trembling of leaves, and the drooping of boughs; in the green of the trees, the blue of the sea and the sky, the yellow of the sunset, and the red of the twilight. We see it also in the raging of storms and thunder and lightning, in the spread of the seas, the height of the mountains, the majesty of the forests, and the grandeur of caves and valleys. It then forms a kind of beauty we call the awe-inspiring, or the sublime, which stirs in man fear and dread alongside pleasure and approval.

As for the beauty of art, it is more varied than the beauty of nature. Of the fine arts I have mentioned six, from each of which branch different colors of beauty. Among them is the awe-inspiring kind, stirring dread, which we find in tragedy; and the kind stirring laughter and amusement, which we see in comedy, the "farce," burlesque, the anecdote, and caricature; the soft, affecting beauty of lyric poetry and of tender music; the rough beauty of martial music and of the poetry of boasting and satire; the firm, solid beauty that marks great buildings; the graceful, astonishing beauty of the movements of the dance; and the mysterious beauty we glimpse in certain literary arts and in symbolic drawings.

We may say that every work of art and every beautiful model is a composite image whose parts stand in harmony. This harmony is the source of rhythm in music, and of concord in the colors and lines of a picture, in the meanings and sounds of poetry, in the movements of the dance, the parts of a statue, and the chapters of a book.

All the kinds of accord and cohesion are what we call unity, and unity is the chief mark of beauty. It is a common error among some people to judge a beautiful person or a beautiful thing by considering its parts each on its own; the right way is to look at the whole and pronounce judgment upon the whole, not the part. For instance, they look at the eyes by themselves, at the nose, at the mouth, at the neck — at each visible part separately — and do not observe whether the parts harmonize among themselves, whether the size of the head accords with the size of the body or conflicts with it, and whether the length of the leg is proportionate to the height of the figure. Another of their errors is that they look at the prominent part — that is, the face — and at nothing else, as a short-sighted man looks at the façade of a building and neglects the remaining parts. The face has its importance in the body, but the shape of the head and its accord with the rest of the body is no less important; likewise the shape of the chest, the arms, and the legs, the height of the figure, and the proportion between the various sizes. Among the common errors in judging human beauty is the considering of color to the exclusion of line, because color strikes the eye more than line — though a picture is always composed of lines and colors, and the painter's skill shows in the lines before it shows in the colors. The condition of beauty in the lines of the human body is that they should incline toward curvature and roundness in women, and toward straightness, or the forming of angles, in men. The beautiful face is the one that broadens at the forehead and tapers at the chin, thus according with the spindle-like shape of the body as a whole. Its opposite is the face that narrows at the forehead and widens at the jaws: a face of ugly lines, because it contradicts the general shape of the body.

Every part of the parts of a work of art, or of a picture, or of a person, is considered beautiful not by itself but in the measure of its accord with the remaining parts. Black hair is beautiful, but it grows more beautiful when it frames a white face, forming with it the beauty of contrast. A slender leg is beautiful when it joins a slender body, and the reverse when it carries a bulky one.

How does the beautiful come to be a source of rest and pleasure? Because the harmony among its parts produces a like harmony in the soul, which then feels relief and expansion. The disfigurers of beauty are many; the chief of them are confusion, disorder, and discord: discord in lines, colors, and sounds; disorder of movements in face and body; heaviness of gait and loss of balance. Among its disfigurers, too, is lack of variety, or harping upon a single string — the one unchanging tone that breeds boredom. A piece of music lacking in variation is tedious; so is the dance that runs on a single pattern, the poem with its unvaried rhyme, and the dress of uniform lines and parts.

Another disfigurer of beauty is excess: excess in ornamentation, for example, tires the beholder and confuses the mind. That is why the painter leaves a space between the frame and the subject of the canvas, so that the viewer's eye may rest by pausing upon the empty space after it has finished examining the central subject.

This rule — the rule of economy in embellishment and of abundance in spaces restful to the eye — holds true of every work of art, whether it be a canvas or a building, a face or a dress, furniture, verse, or prose. The ancient Greeks grasped this rule, and so contented themselves with ornamenting the borders of the garment and the edges of the building. And just as excess is deplored in things of the senses, so it is deplored in things of the spirit: excess in sentiment, for example, or in obscurity and mystification; the literature that overdoes delicacy and softness, or agitation and vehemence; the music that is limp and effeminate, or wild and violent; and the poetry that carries obscurity and difficulty too far.

Excess is one of the manifestations of affectation, which is the placing of things out of their proper places and the violation of the law of moderation. Among the manifestations of affectation also are imitation, absence of individuality, exaggeration that repels, flattery, and lying that offends — the product of beginner artists who lack skill, grace, taste, and mastery.