Reflections on the Cultivation of Taste

We say “so-and-so has good taste” if he is skilled at telling beauty from ugliness. It is a quality that may cling to its possessor and rule him until it makes him suffer at the sight of ugliness or its manifestations: he cannot bear to wear a garment of ugly cut, nor to hear a graceless tune, nor to pass a display of vulgarity or listen to words of abuse without his feelings rising in revolt, even if he tries to suppress them. There is no doubt that whoever lopped off the nose of the Martyrs' statue in Burj Square suffered at the sight of it. Of this type was a lady who once bought a collection of Baudelaire's poetry, “The Flowers of Evil,” printed in Istanbul during the last World War. When she leafed through the book she found it disfigured by spelling mistakes and misprints; and nothing would do but that she burn the book, so that her eyes should never again fall upon the errors that disfigured it. Of this stamp, too, are those who would rather lose a fortune or a post than debase themselves in their speech or their person, and who prefer thirst to drinking stagnant water.

A person can hide many things about himself. He can feign what is not in him, say what he does not mean, and write what he has neither experienced nor believed. But one thing he cannot hide, and that is his taste. For it shows in his gait and his gestures and his photograph, in his conversation and his writing, in his dress, his dwelling, and the furniture he picks out. Hence the cultivation of taste is among the most important sides of schooling and of personal culture.

The cultivation of taste depends on two things: the particular aptitude in every person for distinguishing the beautiful from the ugly, and then the influence of upbringing and environment. In every person there is an inborn aptitude for taste, but this aptitude is stronger in some people than in others. We find, for example, that some children are keener in feeling and stronger in observation than others; these are the more disposed to criticism and judgment. But the most important factor in the formation of taste is environment. Taste is for the most part acquired, not innate. That is why certain peoples are famous for good taste: they possess inherited standards of taste which the grandchildren take over from the grandparents, those standards being noble works of art with which they surround the child from his tenderest years, and an atmosphere of good taste that shows itself in the arrangement of dwelling and furniture, and in ways of living, of social intercourse, of appearance and expression, approved by sound taste.

Taste is general or particular. A person may judge well in most matters, or his capacity of taste may be confined to one particular field: you find a woman of excellent taste in her appearance and attire who lacks good taste in speech, or one who arranges her hair well and cannot arrange her house. Many a poet composes verse finely and recites it badly, and many a painter paints well and errs in criticism.

In the elementary and secondary schools the rudiments of artistic taste are taught through what the pupils receive of the elements of the fine arts — drawing, music, and singing — and through their practice in criticizing literature and savoring it. On the school benches they acquire good enunciation and delivery and the power of analysis. In the gymnastics classes they are trained in grace of movement and of gait. In the handicraft classes they attempt the harmonizing of lines and colors and skill in combining them.

But the very same schools can give lessons in the corruption of taste — if they place in the pupils' hands literary works of feeble worth, and newspapers and magazines cheap in appearance and in thought; if they teach the pupils to be affected in recitation; to sing badly, in a manner whose mark is shouting and ignorance of the rules; to draw in an imitative way empty of personality; and to read literature and poetry superficially and with poor delivery, contenting themselves with explication without discerning the elements of beauty. Schools of this kind are numerous in our surroundings.

Yet the environment of home and society may make up for the school's deficiency. The child who lives in a well-ordered house — not necessarily one of sumptuous furniture — among guardians who refine his senses by observing the hidden beauties of nature and of art, in a city of beautiful buildings and wide streets, free of beggars, possessed of gardens, museums, theaters, and concerts — that child receives, unconsciously, the principles of artistic taste.

We come now to the cultivation of taste outside the domain of the fine arts — I mean social and moral taste. It is perhaps more easily acquired than the taste of art, because it rests on one single all-embracing rule: that each of us avoid annoying others and provoking their boredom or their aversion. This may call for a precision of observation and a delicacy of feeling that enable us to divine another's feeling and perceive what he conceals of his inner state. But it lies

within the power of anyone who has gained some measure of culture to take his own feeling as the measure of the feeling of others. What annoys him annoys people, and it is his duty to refrain from it. Hence unbridled talk or laughter or staring is among the marks of vulgar breeding, while restraint — the governing of feeling, of glance, and of tongue — is among the chief marks of refined taste.

The foundation of taste in all its forms is precision of observation and delicacy of sense. He who notices the varying ripples in the color of the sea and the effect of light and shade on the shapes and colors of things ought also to notice the frown of the person he is talking with, or the brightening of his face, and to read in his glances and movements what he conceals of his feeling.

The modern inquirer holds that lying, and all that derives from it, is among the chief manifestations of weak taste. Lying is not, in his eyes, merely a sin and a moral flaw; it is also proof of a grave deficiency in the education of taste. And lying is not confined to the fabrication of reports and the turning of truth into its opposite: affectation, exaggeration, extravagance in praise, fawning, and dissembling are all varieties of lying, and hence manifestations of weak taste and of the cheapening of personality.

It has been said, in defining taste: it is that a person do or say the fitting thing at the fitting time, in the fitting manner, provided this comes about spontaneously and instinctively. And for taste to become spontaneous and instinctive, it must issue from long practice, until it becomes, like artistic skill, an inseparable part of its possessor, enabling him to judge with an ease that makes people imagine that taste in him is a natural faculty — which it is not.

This definition shows us that the rules of taste, like the rules of art, though possessed of a certain stability, undergo development and take account of the changes of the times.

If you saw a modern woman walking with the slow, languid gait of the women of the past age, you would think her walk affected, or at least contrary to the taste of the age.

And she who uses benedictions in her speech

instead of the simple word of thanks — she too is ignorant of the rules of modern taste. Like her is he who uses in his writing and his sayings the phrases of pomp and the titles of aggrandizement after the manner of past ages.

For among the signs of weak taste is putting a thing out of its time or out of its place — for example, that a woman wear nightclothes for work, or silk stockings for sport, or walk the stony lanes of the village in party dress and high-heeled shoes.

Of this sort is he who uses a grandiose phrase in a book for children, and writes a village dialogue in grandiose language.

I once heard a lady deliver a speech at a gathering of one of the associations, and her speech was a piece of prose that resembled an epic poem in the elegance of its style and its plunging into fancy, until I imagined myself at a session of al-Hariri or of al-Qadi al-Fadil, not at a meeting convened to consider the affairs of the modern woman.

Among the examples of putting a thing out of its place is what I once saw in a little girl of five who was, in her family, an object of astonishment and admiration. They claimed she was a marvel of intelligence and quickness of spirit because in her speech and her gestures she resembled grown-ups. I talked with the child and observed that she was imitating her mother and her aunts on both sides, since she kept company with no one else. And I saw in her speech and gestures an affectation that provoked discomfort instead of pleasure and admiration. I said to myself: better for this child to remain a child — to speak like the children of her own age instead of playing the pedant and straining after precocity. Everything is beautiful in its own place; and the child who mimics grown-ups is unsightly, like fruit out of season.

The girl's education in taste meets with special attention from most parents, because from her earliest years they instill in her mind that she must strive to attract notice and win admiration. But this direction often drags her into affectation, for she attempts art in ignorance of its rules, and so falls into ugliness.

The rule it is well to follow in this matter is: when art fails us, let us hold fast to nature. For there is no disputing that nature is far better than ugly art.