No More Learning

Indeed, the moment that an artist
takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand,
he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman,
an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be
considered as an artist. Art is the most intense mode of Individualism
that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real
mode of Individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under
certain conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take
cognisance of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the
sphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours,
without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and
if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at
all.

And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form
of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an
authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as
it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public has always,
and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art
to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd
vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what
they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy
after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are
wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular.
The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide
difference. If a man of science were told that the results of his
experiments, and the conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a
character that they would not upset the received popular notions on the
subject, or disturb popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of
people who knew nothing about science; if a philosopher were told that
he had a perfect right to speculate in the highest spheres of thought,
provided that he arrived at the same conclusions as were held by those
who had never thought in any sphere at all--well, nowadays the man of
science and the philosopher would be considerably amused.
Yet it is
really a very few years since both philosophy and science were subjected
to brutal popular control, to authority in fact--the authority of
either the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed
for power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of course, we have
to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the
community, or the Church, or the Government, to interfere with the
individualism of speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with
the individualism of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, it does
more than linger; it is aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.

In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the
public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have
been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read
it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult
poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them,
they leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in
which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of
popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces
such badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form,
such silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The
popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It
is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is
too easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style,
psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned
are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most
uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such
requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament,
would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the
amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his
individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender
everything that is valuable in him. In the case of the drama, things are
a little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true,
but they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the
two most popular forms, are distinct forms of art. Delightful work may
be produced under burlesque and farcical conditions, and in work of this
kind the artist in England is allowed very great freedom.