Without the author's vivid and rich
participation, we who read can never be fully engaged, and we shall
find more of life in the story, the more there is of him in it.
CHAPTER XI
THE DOMINION OF ART OVER NATURE: PAINTING
In literature, as we observed in our last two chapters, nature does
not find aesthetic expression on its own account. In the lyric, nature
appears only as the reflection of personal moods and thoughts, in the
drama and novel and epic only as the theater of human action or the
determiner of human fate. In painting and sculpture, on the other hand,
the expression of nature is the primary aim. Of course, in so far as
this expression is aesthetic, it is an expression not of nature alone,
but of our responses as well; but nature is the starting point, not
emotion as in lyric poetry, nor the effect upon destiny as in the epic.
Because they are expressions of nature, and because the copying of the
human body, of trees, clouds, and the like is an indispensable part
of their practice, painting and sculpture have seemed to give support
to the theory of art as imitation. Yet, although the activity of
imitation is a means to the creation of picture and statue, the mere
fact of being a copy is not the purpose of the completed work nor the
ground of our pleasure in it. Not its relation to anything outside
itself, no matter how important for its making, but its own intrinsic
qualities constitute its aesthetic worth.
This was true of the earliest efforts in these arts.
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