Burke, Kenneth. Counterstatement.
The seeming breach
between form and subject-matter, between technique and psychology, which has
taken place in the last century is the result, it seems to me, of scientific
criteria being unconsciously introduced into matters of purely aesthetic
judgment. The flourishing of science has been so vigorous that we have not yet
had time to make a spiritual readjustment adequate to the changes in our
resources of material and knowledge. (31)
There are disorders
of the social system which are caused solely by our undigested wealth (the
basic disorder being, perhaps, the phenomenon of overproduction: to remedy
this, instead of having all workers employed on half time, we have half working
full time and the other half idle, so that whereas overproduction could be the
greatest reward of applied science, it has been, up to now, the most menacing
condition modern civilization has had to face).
(31)
It would be absurd
to suppose that such social disorders would not be paralleled by disorders of
culture and taste, especially since science is so pronouncedly a spiritual
factor. So that we are, owing to the
sudden wealth science has thrown upon us, all nouveaux-riches in matters of culture, and most poignantly in that
field where lack of native firmness is most readily exposed, in matter of æsthetic judgment.
(31-32)
One of the most
striking derangements of tastes which science has temporarily thrown upon us
involves the understanding of psychology in art. Psychology has become a body
of information (which is precisely what psychology in science should be, or
must be). And similarly, in art, we tend
to look for psychology as the purveying of information. (32)
Thus, the great
influx of information has led the artist also to lay his emphasis on the giving
of information – with the result that art tends more and more to substitute the
psychology of the hero (the subject) for the psychology of the audience. Under such an attitude, when form is
preserved it is preserved as an annex, a luxury, or, as some feel, a downright
affectation. It remains, though
sluggish, like the human appendix, for occasional demands are still made upon
it; but its true vigor is gone, since it is no longer organically required. Proposition:
The hypertrophy of the psychology of information is accompanied by the
corresponding atrophy of the psychology of form. (32-33)
In information, the
matter is intrinsically interesting. And
by intrinsically interesting I do not necessarily mean intrinsically valuable,
as witness the intrinsic interest of backyard gossip or the most casual
newspaper items. In art, at least the
art of the great ages (Æschylus, Shakespeare, Racine) the matter is interesting by means of an extrinsic
use, a function. (33)
The methods of
maintaining interest which are most natural to the psychology of information
(as it is applied to works of pure art) are surprise and suspense. The method most natural to the psychology of
form is eloquence. For this reason the
great ages of Æschylus, Shakespeare, and Racine,
dealing as they did with material which was more or less a matter of common
knowledge so that the broad outlines of the plot were known in advance (while
it is the broad outlines which are usually exploited to secure surprise and
suspense) developed formal excellence, or eloquence, as the basis of appeal in their
work. (36)
The drama, more
than any other form, must never lose sight of its audience: here the failure to
satisfy the proper requirements is most disastrous. And since certain contemporary work is
successful, it follows that rudimentary laws of composition are being complied
with. The distinction is one of
intensity rather than of kind. The
contemporary audience hears the lines of a play or novel with the same
equipment as it brings to reading the lines of its daily paper. It is content to have facts placed before it
in some more or less adequate sequence. (37)
Eloquence is the
minimizing of this interest in fact, per
se, so that the “more or less adequate sequence” of their presentation must
be relied on to a much greater extent.
Thus, those elements of surprise and suspense are subtilized,
carried down into the writing of a line or a sentence, until in all its
smallest details the work bristles with disclosures, contrasts, restatements
with a difference, ellipses, images, aphorism, volume, sound-values, in short
all that complex wealth of minutiæ which in their
line-for-line aspect we call style and in their broader outlines we call
form. (37-38)
Suspense is the
concern over the possible outcome of some specific detail of plot rather than
for general qualities. (38)
But to return, we
have made three terms synonymous: form, psychology, and eloquence. And eloquence thereby becomes the essence of
art, while pity, tragedy, sweetness, humor, in short all the emotions which we
experience in life proper, as non-artists, are simply the material on which
eloquence may feed. (40)
Eloquence is simply
the end of art, and is thus its essence.
Even the poorest art is eloquent, but in a poor way, with less
intensity, until this aspect is obscured by others fattening upon its leanness. Eloquence is not showiness; it is, rather,
the result of that desire in the artist to make a work perfect by adapting it
in every minute detail to the racial appetites. (41)
The distinction
between the psychology of information and the psychology of form involves a
definition of æsthetic truth. It is here precisely, to combat the
deflection which the strength of science has caused to our tastes, that we must
examine the essential breach between scientific and artistic truth. Truth in art is not the discovery of facts,
not an addition to human knowledge in the scientific sense of the word. It is, rather, the exercise of human
propriety, the formulation of symbols which rigidify our sense of poise and rhythm.
Artistic truth is the externalization of
taste. (42)
Footnote 8: The procedure of science involve the
elimination of taste, employing as a substitute the corrective norm of the
pragmatic test, the empirical experiment, which is entirely intellectual. (42)
Art must have a subject, and a spontaneous subject. And what could be a more spontaneous subject for the artist that the matter of his maladjustment? Is not every man concerned primarily with his “problems”? Is the case different with the scientist, the explore, the business man? Is not genius, in whatever channel it appears, distinguished by the persistence of its preoccupations – and are not man’s preoccupations essentially a matter of volition, and hence of frustration? (p. 75)
And as for the “escape” of art, there is much to indicate that the artist is, of all men, equipped to confront the issue. The very conventions of art often provide him with a method for freely admitting experiences and situations which the practical man must conceal. (pp. 75-76)
When the appeal of art as method is eliminated and the appeal of art as experience is stressed, art seems futile indeed. Experience is less the aim of art than the subject of art; art is not experience, but something added to experience. But by making art and experience synonymous, a critic provides an unanswerable reason why a man of spirit should renounce art forever. (p. 77)
The point is irrefutable. Insofar as a social context changes, the work of art erected upon it is likely to change in evaluation. (p. 77)
In conclusion, then: (a) Even the greatest works of art are couched, not in the language of “mankind,” but in the language of a specific cultural tradition, and the loss of the tradition is like the loss of the dictionary; and (b) since art is inevitably inferior in an era of civilization, we are invited to abandon all hope of further artistic excellence in our cultural cycle. (p. 85)
We advocate nothing, then, but a return to inconclusiveness. A century of “refutations” is salutary at least in emphasizing the fact that art has not been “refuted.” For the rest, in most instances, to keep him at his vocation, though he felt it a positive offense against mankind. Art needs nothing by way of “sanction” but the neutralizing of its detractors. It needs no “dignity” beyond the mere zero of not being glibly vilified. To the artist, the belief that the ways of influence are devious and unpredictable, and that “anything can happen,” should be sufficient justification for devoting himself to his purely aesthetic problems, solving them according to his lights, and letting all other eventualities take care of themselves. (p. 91)
Art – “eternal” in so far as it deals with the constants of humanity (“constants of humanity”: the recurrent emotions, the fundamental attitudes, the typical experiences).
But art is also historical – a particular mode of adjustment to a particular cluster of conditions. The cluster of conditions is fluctuant (from age to age, from class to class, from person to person), thus calling for changes of emphasis. (p. 107)
In contemporary America the distinguishing emergent factor is obviously mechanization, industrialism, as it effects our political institutions, as it alters our way of living, as it makes earlier emphases malapropos or even dangerous…consider for instance the many social difficulties arising from the doctrine of the laissez faire, though the counterpart of this doctrine, self-dependence and individualism, was an adequate adjustment to the conditions of pioneering. (pp. 107-108)
The symbol is perhaps most overwhelming in its effect when the artist’s and the reader’s patterns of experience closely coincide. (p. 153)
Intensity in art may be attributed sometimes to form, sometimes to the Symbol, sometimes to both. Symbolic intensity arises when the artist uses subject-matter “charged” by the reader’s situation outside the work of art. (p. 163)
Eloquence, by stressing means of literature, requires an interest in the means as ends. Otherwise eloquence becomes an obstacle to enjoyment. (p. 167)