Lecture
N.G. Chernyshevsky on the relationship between art and reality.
Art arose in deep antiquity, in the Stone Age. For primitive man the earliest forms of artistic activity – the creation of myths, songs, and dances, the depiction of animals on cave walls, the decoration of tools, weapons, clothing, and the human body itself – were of enormous importance, since they fostered the cohesion of human communities, developed them spiritually, helped them become aware of their social nature and their difference from animals, that is, they served the great historical task of humanizing man.
Art, one of the forms of social consciousness, a constituent part of humanity's spiritual culture, is a specific kind of practical-spiritual assimilation of the world. In this sense, Art includes a group of varieties of human activity – painting, music, theater, literature, and so on. These are specific – artistic-figurative – forms of reproducing reality. In a broader sense the word "Art" is applied to any form of practical activity when it is carried out skillfully, masterfully, artfully – not only in a technological but also in an aesthetic sense.
In his dissertation, Chernyshevsky first examines the prevailing idealist conceptions of the aim and subject of art, namely notions of the beautiful. He then proclaims his thesis «the beautiful is life». In proclaiming this thesis, Ch. took life in the full boundlessness of its manifestations, in the sense of the joy of being (better to be than not to be). He interpreted life in its socio-class manifestations. Ch. said that peasants and gentlefolk have different conceptions of beauty. For example, the beauty of a village girl as against a society lady. He put forward a class principle for understanding the problem of the beautiful. Ch. also pointed out that the sphere of art should not be limited to the beautiful alone: «that which is of general interest in life – that is the content of art». Besides the task of reproducing reality, art has the purpose of providing an explanation of life, of being a textbook of life. Such is the intrinsic property of art itself. The purpose of art, according to Ch., consists in reproducing reality, in explaining it, and in passing judgment upon it. Some critics consider that Ch. returns to Belinsky's ideas. A special place in his dissertation is occupied by the thesis of passing judgment on life. But in Ch.'s dissertation there are also simplifications. He asserted that art is secondary and reality is primary («higher than art»).
However, Ch.'s comparison of images of art with living objects is not conducted in the sense that art relates to life as a «second reality». Ch. grants art only the right to be a means of information, of commentary, a «surrogate for reality». Even the expression «textbook of life» has a narrow meaning – a handbook of life, an abridged account of it. Ch. believed that although passing judgment on reality does enter into the writer's intention, he nonetheless does not rise to the generalizations of a scholar, nor does the work of art rise to the level of a scholarly treatise. In Ch.'s view, the only difference is that history, for example, speaks of the life of humanity and of the life of society, while art speaks of the individual life of humanity. Ch. pointed out in his dissertation that art can easily make up for the incompleteness of the picture of reality, and in this sense it has an advantage over reality. But still Ch. did not consider these possibilities of art to be essential and immediately limited their significance (landscape is merely a frame, an accessory). The writer's imagination only embellishes, invents new combinations, diversifies the combinations of those elements that reality provides him.
Artistic creation exists in order to satisfy people's need for the beautiful. What is art meant for? To explain the inexplicable. Art is a form of the spiritual assimilation of reality. So that this world can be creatively transformed.
Since art is the assimilation of the world from a human point of view. It was created so that a person could order his relations with the world. Cosmos is the universe, where everything is created according to laws, according to order. And chaos is complete disorder. Thanks to art, a person can perceive the world either as cosmos or as chaos. In depicting the world as chaos, the hero longs for cosmos. The content of art is the whole of human life, everything that surrounds him, the world as an aesthetic value; the assimilation of the value-laden being of man.
The subject of art is man. The form of reflection in art is the artistic image. In science, the generalization of experience occurs by means of concepts and reasoning, at the cost of abstraction. In science the movement is from the particular to the general. The artist reproduces life in the very form of life, visually, concretely, imagistically, appealing to the imagination and feeling of the reader, viewer, listener. In art the generalization of experience occurs through concretization. The artistic image always generalizes, but from concrete positions, through individualization and concretization.
Art and science: in common: 1. They are sign systems by which man cognizes nature and himself, and for this they use experiments, analysis and synthesis. 2. Art and Science are two great engines of culture; before the Renaissance they were fused into a single whole. 3. At their basis lie philosophical conceptions of the nature of the Universe and of man. 4. They objectively reflect reality, cognizing the essential aspects of being.
Differences: 1. Unlike science, art does not set itself the goal of providing specialized information about particular areas of social practice or of revealing their physical and other laws. 2. Art assimilates reality aesthetically; science, by theoretical-applied methods. 3. Art exerts a great influence on psychology. Science, on the material world. 4. Art is characterized by subjectivism: the author invests his own «I» in the creation. Science, by contrast, strives for objectivity. 5. In art there is always room for intuitiveness and immediacy. The scientific method is strictly rational. 6. Every work of art is singular and complete. Every scientific discovery is a link in a chain of predecessors and followers.
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