DOI issue:
Hapgood, Norman: Henri Beyle
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0231
By Norman Hapgood 227
of view for nineteen-twentieths of life, but not for art. u I care
only for genius, for young painters with fire in the soul and open
intelligence.” For disinterested, cool taste, for objective justness
and precision, he has only contempt. Indeed, he accepts Goethe’s
definition of taste as the art of properly tying one’s cravats in
things of the mind. Everything that is not special to the Speaker,
personal, he identifies with thinness, insincerity, pose. “The best
thing one can bring before works of art, is a natural mind. One
must dare to feel what he does feel.” To be one’s seif, the first
of rules, means to follow one’s primitive Sentiments. “ Instead of
wishing to judge according to literary principles, and defend
correct doctrines, why do not our youths content themselves with
the fairest privilege of their age, to have Sentiments ? ” There is
no division into impersonal judgment and private Sentiment. The
only criticism that has value is private, personal, intimate.
Less special to Stendhal now, though rare at the time in which
he lived, is the appeal to life as the basis of art. “To find the
Greeks, look in the forests of America.” Go to the swimming-
school or the ballet to realise the correctness and the energy of
Michelangelo. Familiarity is everything. “The work of
genius is the sense of conversation,” and as “the man who takes
the word of another is a cruel bore in a salon,” so is he as a critic.
“ What is the antique bas-relief to me ? Let us try to make good
modern painting. The Greeks loved the nude. We never see it,
and moreover it repels us.” This conclusion shows the weakness,
or the limitation, of this kind of criticism, which as Stendhal
applies it would keep us from all we have learned from the revived
study of the nude, because the first impression to one unused to
seeing it is not an artistic one. But the limitations of Stendhal and
his worid are obvious enough. It is his eloquence and usefulness
within his limits that are worth examination.
“ Beauty,”
of view for nineteen-twentieths of life, but not for art. u I care
only for genius, for young painters with fire in the soul and open
intelligence.” For disinterested, cool taste, for objective justness
and precision, he has only contempt. Indeed, he accepts Goethe’s
definition of taste as the art of properly tying one’s cravats in
things of the mind. Everything that is not special to the Speaker,
personal, he identifies with thinness, insincerity, pose. “The best
thing one can bring before works of art, is a natural mind. One
must dare to feel what he does feel.” To be one’s seif, the first
of rules, means to follow one’s primitive Sentiments. “ Instead of
wishing to judge according to literary principles, and defend
correct doctrines, why do not our youths content themselves with
the fairest privilege of their age, to have Sentiments ? ” There is
no division into impersonal judgment and private Sentiment. The
only criticism that has value is private, personal, intimate.
Less special to Stendhal now, though rare at the time in which
he lived, is the appeal to life as the basis of art. “To find the
Greeks, look in the forests of America.” Go to the swimming-
school or the ballet to realise the correctness and the energy of
Michelangelo. Familiarity is everything. “The work of
genius is the sense of conversation,” and as “the man who takes
the word of another is a cruel bore in a salon,” so is he as a critic.
“ What is the antique bas-relief to me ? Let us try to make good
modern painting. The Greeks loved the nude. We never see it,
and moreover it repels us.” This conclusion shows the weakness,
or the limitation, of this kind of criticism, which as Stendhal
applies it would keep us from all we have learned from the revived
study of the nude, because the first impression to one unused to
seeing it is not an artistic one. But the limitations of Stendhal and
his worid are obvious enough. It is his eloquence and usefulness
within his limits that are worth examination.
“ Beauty,”