The thing about reading Tolstoy is that he says things you've already thought and suspected, but says it better than you can. As with all of Tolstoy's books, his characteristic style, personality, and moralism is suffused throughout. Even if you walk away disagreeing, you feel edified after having wrestled with the content. So, where to start?
What about his situating us in the strange world of art itself? And it is strange when you think about it. We're taken backstage to an opera or a ballet. We feel like we're really there. We hear the murmuring, yelling, shifting, tapping, groaning, shuffling, and all that white noise we'd expect backstage or during a rehearsal or practice. He points out how inane a lot of things are that go on. The stage director is yelling at everyone. Everyone there just grins and bears it. So much money is spent on all the costumes and makeup. So many people pay to see the end product. No matter how much the conductor yells at everyone, there is no limit to the amount of verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse they endure. All of this begs the question. What is this 'thing' that all these people are working toward creating?
And that's just opera. There are all the other modes of art as well.
So, what's that eternal, almost Socratic, question? What is art?
What then comes is a virtual whirlwind tour of pretty much every aesthetic theory on the market. It's a panorama of the entire aesthetic terrain at the time. No philosopher is spared Tolstoy's spirited scrutiny or scorn. No theory is sacrosanct. His consideration and sometimes curt dismissal of particular theories are a tad breezy and facile, but it all leads to what Tolstoy thinks anyway, and that's probably the main reason why readers bought the book anyway. I had just slogged through Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment. My mind felt like it had been limping in the hot tar of Kant's stodgy and turgid prose. It was a breath of fresh air to read Tolstoy's inimitable style. Tolstoy's animadversion is basically that 19th-century Art had been essentially about Beauty (and the distinct pleasure aroused from that Beauty), but that this can't be right, since there can be Beauty without Art and Art without Beauty.
Tolstoy's main point is that art is successful when it communicates an intended feeling to its audience. It successfully expresses the particular, comprehensible emotion of the artist as it's concretized in the aesthetic product. There is also a normative element. Any normal Joe should be able to be infected by such a feeling or emotion. It shouldn't only appeal to the elites or a particular class. It should be catholic, and universal. Theories of art might be able to get away with this, but not art itself. You also shouldn't have to endure hermeneutical acrobatics to finally catch art's meaning. A work of art shouldn't be veiled or gnostic or hard to grasp. It shouldn't ever be cryptic or turbid. It should be open to view. Bad art arises from entrenched 'schools of criticism', or being deceived into an 'agony of influence' (where you know that imitating certain art will ensure your social approval by the elites and invitations to those dreaded 'cocktail parties'), or set ways of creating Art, giving rise to the professionalization of those ways, getting a 'career' in those ways, where the main thing is to earn a living and make your Art a commodity, where you have an Aesthetic Emporium of sorts. To think about Art in economic terms is enough to my blood run cold.
As lofty as this sounds, I can't quite come to accept the essence of this theory. I see how it might be necessary in some cases, but I don't see why it would be sufficient in all. And I don't see why it's not sufficient in some cases, and not necessarily necessary in all cases. It's necessary in those cases where the artist intends to infect the audience with such a feeling/emotion. But is it sufficient? Isn't there more to a work of art than the communication of a feeling? Slicing a carrot on a cutting board infects me with a feeling, but that can't be art. Don't get me wrong. Feelings and emotions are about as meaningful as it gets. Perhaps they can be hierarchically related so that the more noble end of the emotional spectrum is that which successful art infects. But is that all there is? Such noble emotions can be aroused by other things besides art, it seems to me. Think of the noble emotions aroused by soldiers in battle.
More to the point, can't we pinpoint all the other things all the other theories of art postulate? As long as they can be put together consistently? Tolstoy dismisses them, but why can't I endorse them without making them necessary and sufficient for a work of art to be successful art? Depending on the context, they might emphasize things that are sufficient, but not necessary, or necessary, but not sufficient. I can't see anything in what Tolstoy argues that would prevent my doing this.
Tolstoy then talks about the best emotions, the ones that saturate his understanding of the essence of Christianity: the unity of men with God and men with one another. The artist whose art infects the audience with these emotions is the best art. There is some affinity with Kant's aesthetic sentiments. Kant called Beauty the symbol of morality and Tolstoy is concerned not to elevate Beauty above Morality, which he saw art in the elite classes doing. Also, art shouldn't arouse something prurient, like the sexual instinct alone, if at all. Trent Reznor's 'Animal' is out. Any art that expresses base emotions is condemned. I mostly agree with this. I do think art, along these lines, if done well, and if appreciated in the right spirit, can be edifying in some way I can't, at the moment, specify. Some such lingering idea like all truth being God's truth seems to be relevant. But I digress.
The end has to do with science. Tolstoy argues that the sciences shape how we judge what's important in this life. Change science to reflect what is noblest in life and art will follow suit. I'd have to think about that, but I wonder why it can't go the other way as well. Can't science be affected by art? Again, it just seems to me to depend. Sometimes one can be downstream from the other. Perhaps the movie 'Inherit the Wind' wouldn't have happened had Darwin not published 'Origin of Species', but I wonder about the cultural impact of the movie and how that impact may have impacted science more than Darwin might have impacted culture. I don't know. I'm just speculating. The arts and the sciences are two potent forces and it's hard to believe that influence flows in only one direction.
Overall, a great book well worth your time. Anything by Tolstoy is worth your time. He has the rare quality of being charming when dogmatic, and so one's pique is never fully awoken. The prose is consistently mellifluous and characteristically éclat, not peaks and valleys, but a steady, flowing river. The style is paradoxically romantic and possessed of commonsense realism. His critical attitude is peevish but oftentimes deserved. There are rarely any cavils.
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