Guilford Press Science fcf Society, Vol. L, No. 4, Winter 1986, pp.

415-439

The Idea of Art for Art's Sake: Intellectual Origins, Social Conditions, and Poetic Doctrine
Author(s): Gene H. Bell-Villada THE IDEA OF ART FOR ART'S SAKE:
Source: Science & Society, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Winter, 1986/1987), pp. 415-439
Published by: Guilford Press INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS, SOCIAL
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Accessed: 08-12-2019 14:10 UTC CONDITIONS, AND POETIC DOCTRINE*

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In the Far East what is called
the "esthetic emotion" still retains
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a religious dimension, even
among intellectuals.1
Mircea Eliade
I

FOR ART'S SAKE. The phrase today sounds slightly

quaint. It inevitably suggests Oscar Wilde and the epi-
grams he gave common currency in the "Preface" to The
Picture of Dorian Gray. To our English and American ears, the
aestheticist ideal is most eloquently summed up in such provoca-
tive Wildean notions as "There is no such thing as a moral or an
immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written, that is
all"; or that anti-moralistic assertion, "No artist has ethical sym-
pathies. . . . Vice and virtue are materials for art"; or Wilde's
most ironic and perverse of reflections, "All art is quite useless."2
To associate Art for Art's Sake so exclusively with Oscar
Wilde, however, is to blind ourselves to the wider spread of
aestheticist sorts of doctrines, both in past and present. Wilde's
lapidary thoughts actually originate with French Romantic and
Symbolist poets, who in turn had simplified a theory taught and
popularized by a handful of Parisian professors (notably Victor
Cousin), whose lectures on aesthetic autonomy derived in the
Guilford Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science
main from a treatise written by a remote and difficult Prussian
& Society
* The author gratefully acknowledges a 1979 grant from the National Endowment for
the Humanities, which helped make possible much of the research for this study.
1 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard Trask
(New York, 1959), p. 154.
2 Oscar Wilde, "The Preface," The Picture of Dorian Gray (Baltimore, 1966), p. 5.

415
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416 SCIENCE fcf SOCIETY ART FOR ART'S SAKE 417

philosopher named Immanuel Kant, whose own Doubtless the distinguished

magisterial ar- schola
guments stemmed ultimately from the rap intuitionism
take exception to ofmy
theputting them in
Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Across bourgeois pany Europe,
with Oscarwe Wilde.
shall But it is not m
see, there was much that preceded Oscar Wilde'sacademic
witty, literary
irrever-
theory in our dizzy
ent, and specifically an ti- Victorian brand ofamong its confused debates. Rather, w
aestheticism.
Once the aestheticist ideal was launched, itdoassumed
is to castana ideo-
synoptic glance at the pa
logical life of its own, and today it survives iginsas of
a subjacent but Sake as a sustain
Art for Art's
determining presence in all cultural debate. Inted,
hisandownconsciously
time, Os-espoused and belie
car Wilde would achieve fame as the spokesman poets. To for
thisPure Art
expository end I will be
among the British, but it is ironic that his own temperament
terchangeably such and
terms as aestheticism
career are not exactly typical of aestheticism.for Oscar
Art'sWilde's phe-
Sake, and a phrase of my own
nomenal wit, his extraverted social skills, his of
ability tothere
course writeare
fast,
the French phrase
and his enormous success in the commercial theater all rather pure, which are particularly appropr
contradict the Flaubertian image of introverted sainthood, of ab- trine first emerged as a battle cry in
stention from worldly enticements, of slow struggle to shape the movements and cultural slogans.
perfect work of art. There is in Wilde's outrageous pronounce- The aestheticist ideal makes us am
ments a certain self-irony, an unsolemn flippancy inconceivable one hand from our own intuitions we
in Gautier or Mallarmé, and the impression is of a mischief- ical phenomena do exist. Most of us
maker as much intent on flouting Victorian respectability as on gardless of how we feel about the med
presenting a case. Though a brilliant publicist for Art for Art's bly delighted by a rose garden, even
Sake, a practitioner he was not. have one for his backyard. Parsifal c
At the same time, our habitually close association of the idea know full well that a German nation
with Oscar Wilde and his British 1890s serves only to obscure unredeemed anti-Semite did compos
the extent to which, since 1945, Art for Art's Sake in various no reason save for the gratuitous an
guises has been the preponderant literary orientation on the objects can provide, and we seek to
North American campus. Starting with the New Criticism and its loved ones and other receptive individ
academic systematization by René Wellek and Austin Warren, probably also believe that certain
followed thereafter by Northrop Frye's grand and sweeping vi- negate the purely aesthetic response
sion of literature as an all-sufficient body shaped solely from best, that the limiting of reading lis
within and never from without,3 and on to present-day linguisti- repertories only succeeded in impov
cally derived speculations about the non-referentiality of all texts minds of Cromwell's Englishmen or
(historical and legal texts included), the sharp disjunction be- recently in the U.S.S.R. the works of
tween aesthetic experiences and most other human concerns has denounced as "formalist," adjudged ars
been regarded as fundamental, axiomatic, the very point of de- banned - an exclusionary doctrine d
parture for any literary theory that seeks a serious hearing and serious artists or connoisseurs in East or West.
intellectual respectability.4 On the other hand many of us feel ill at ease with the moral

(Baltimore, 1973). Sanford Levinson, "Law as Literature," Texas Law Review, 60, No.
3 René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York, 1949). Northrop 3 (March 1982), pp. 373-403. See also rebuttal by Gerald Graff, "'Keep off the
Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, 1957). Grass,' 'Drop Dead,' and Other Indeterminacies: A Response to Sanford Levinson,"
4 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe pp. 405-413.

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 418 SCIENCE fcf SOCIETY ART FOR ART'S SAKE 419

indifferentism of Art for Art's Sake ("No artist ogy, has

its own best
ethical sym- and rightful inne
Such
pathies"), the view that, e.g., stalking a rare and extreme butter-
beautiful instances, however, do
fly matters far more than rescuing a wounded tory man in distress. doctrine. For pu
of aestheticist
This Olympian inhumanity can shade further timelessinto
and outright
universal notions but ra
amoralism, and on occasions has fused much too readily
historically firstwith
takes root in post-
fascism. To recall that well-known distinction first noted
develops, by Wal-
refines itself and circulates
ter Benjamin: communists politicize art, whereas
orthodoxy in fascists
the United States.
aestheticize politics.5 The latter approach had its Nevertheless the continued existe
classic instance
in Mussolini's own son, who, commenting on his air
tions raidspour
of l'art in thel'art can give rise
Italian-Ethiopian war, praised the beauty of the standings
detonatingand bombs
categorical assertions
and compared them to blooming flowers. exponent and practitioner of the aes
For a chillingly prophetic example of absolute Ever the aestheticism
virtuoso stylist and master
and its fascist potential, I quote from George Moore's
slightest hint memoir,
of a social conception
Confessions of a Young Man, Presumably under sis, the influence
sublimely of
dismissed several hun
Nietzsche, Moore dismisses those contemptible listpleas for pityalleged
comprising and nullities on
justice with a cadenza that I can only hope Mann, is tongue-in-cheek:
Camus, Faulkner, and even
painting,
Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries and thus
of life isipso facto unworth
the sublime fruit of injustice. . . . Man would not be Ideologues
man but for ofinjus-
Nabokov's persuasi
dress the time-bound and culture-bound nature of their own
tice. Hail, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice! What care I
that some millions of wretched Israelites died under Pharoah's lash views. Aesthetic separatism, I have already suggested, is a doc-
. . .? It was well that they died that I might have the pyramids to look trine virtually inconceivable before the nineteenth century. And
on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment. Is there one amongst us the idea, to my knowledge, holds no major status outside of
who would exchange them for the lives of the ignominious slaves that Western cultures. On the other hand, the popular notion that
died . . .? Nay, more, the knowledge that wrong was done - that mil- the concept of Art for Art's Sake reflects "the alienation of the
lions of Israelites died in torments - is an added pleasure which I artist" in bourgeois society is something of a simplification. Many
could not afford to spare. Oh, for the silence of marble courts . . .6
a reputable author has enjoyed fairly harmonious, even fruitful
As we all know, Moore's aesthetic visions were again to come and prosperous relations with bourgeois society. One never
thinks of Dickens or Trollope or Balzac or Hugo as "alienated
true, and perhaps a few Teutonic pyramids now inspire such de-
artists." Finally, the vulgar-Marxist belief that Art for Art's Sake
light.
is a phenomenon of the decadent bourgeoisie simply ignores the
Once again, I am not debating social versus aesthetic con-
historical record. The most superficial knowledge of literature
ceptions of art. If anything, the perverse lyric transports of
and the other arts since 1820 tells us that l'art pour l'art has al-
George Moore and of Mussolini fils serve to illustrate the lunatic
extremes to which absolute Art for Art's Sake can be pushed - ways been present as a component sect somewhere in bourgeois
culture. The conventional explanations for the rise of Art for
alas, probably the incidental and sorry lot of most every ideol-
Art's Sake, then, cannot account for some major contradictions,
and are thus either too general or too narrow in their overall fo-
5 Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illumi- cus.
nations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. with an introduction by Hannah Arendt (New York,
1969), p. 242. For a pertinent discussion of morality and art in narrative, see Wayne
Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago, 1961), pp. 387-398. 7 Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York, 1973), passim. See also
6 George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man (New York, 1901), pp. 106-107. The Nation, May 31, 1975.

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420 SCIENCE & SOCIETY ART FOR ARTS SAKE 421

II beauty is already present in much o

aesthetical ideal receives eloquent e
I believe that there are concrete social, economic, political,
named Philocles and
(the Greek root philo
cultural reasons for the emergence of thethe ideology
author's ofintellectual
Art for mouthpiece in
Art's Sake, and I shall examine these reasons "The in due time. At this
Moralists." Opposing Philocles i
point, however, we need to cast a backward glance by the at namethe oftangled
Theocles, who repeate
prehistory of the doctrine by first tracing its fully to enjoy part
constitutive the beauty
in of a valley
the writings of Enlightenment thinkers, then briefly
surely outlining
aspire to own itsthose objects, or
maximum expression in the Critique of Judgment the beauties
by Kant. of the ocean, Philocles wo
The first exponent of a purely aesthetic sort of philosophy
admiral does. But Philocles time and
was a benevolent, tender-minded gentleman "absurd" and gifted amateur
and explicitly argues that
by the name of Anthony Coope, known as and the Third
control is Earl
"very of different from t
Shaftesbury. An independent man of letters followand from
genuine thelover
contemplation of t
of the arts, Shaftesbury felt repelled both by the antiaesthetic
Nevertheless, re-
Shaftesbury does not
ligiosity of the Puritans and by the coldly mechanistic from social, epistemol-
moral, or cognitive con
ogy of Hobbes and Locke. Himself intuitive in temperament
diverse realms as and belonging to a large
largely educated by private tutors (among them Locke,
thetical hasironically
consequences for the eth
enough), Shaftesbury grew into the farthestample, thing he possible
statesfromin "Virtue or Merit
an academic theorist who deploys logical concepts love of order,and rational
harmony, and proporti
doctrines, and devised instead a rhapsodic ing and toimpressionistic
the temper, advantageous to social
prose style that precludes linear and systematic ant to formulation
virtue, whichof is itself no other
his views. Owing perhaps to this very lack of conventional
beauty in society"expos-(1:279, emphasis a
itory rigor, Shaftesbury's major work, the Characteristics,
bury judges morals enjoyed and mores in term
remarkable success, going through eleven editions from 1711
they afford, to
suggesting that there is
1790, and at the same time influencing key thinkers,
ship" nor "so Kant in-
charming as a gene
cluded. A work of "philosophy" in the popular sense, it preaches
Shaftesbury further envisions the Go
not reason (which scarcely interested its author) True but a harmoni-
as mutually linked within the
ous and inspired (and, to many of its readers, inspiring)
values, wisdom.
affirming that "beauty and tru
Wisdom for Shaftesbury is to be achieved notion by apprehending
of utility and convenience" (2:2
the order, beauty, and good of the world. is atTheoncevehicle for
both beautiful and true is
gaining such wisdom is a balanced and harmonious and good" personality.
(2:269).
The prime means for testing morals as well as Shaftesbury beauty is our fac-propounded a do
thus
ulty of taste; and the Good as well as the Beautiful minds may are best intu-
appear contradictory. O
ited by an individual endowed with superior Beautytaste.as In
an this re-
experience which occurs
gard, beauty becomes a medium whereby the controlharmony of the
or personal desire. On the o
world is revealed to and grasped by such an individual.
experience as a Hence
constituting part of
for Shaftesbury one basic way to "mend the ment manners
within ... of our
a grand ideal that encom
noble countrymen" is to inculcate in them "a little better taste"
(1:137).8 8 Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics,
Our modern ideal of free, autonomous, "disinterested" Mass., 1963). Subsequent page references will be

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422 SCIENCE & SOCIETY ART FOR ART'S SAKE 423

conduct, harmony of character, and education of philosophy of men's souls. and aesthet
and literary
What seems illogical and contradictory to theus in our
eminent time,
minds ofhow-the [eighteenth
ever, actually has to do with those rigid dichotomies ideas during the Enlightenment
(aesthetic vs. pre
social, beautiful vs. useful) controlling again Western debate words,
in Cassirer's today."a deep and
Among eighteenth century thinkers the two ion doctrines
of the problems" were toof bephilosophy
ajudged not as inconsistent but as complementary generalized recognition
points of ref- that "the tw
erence.
in agreement in their indirect effects
The Enlightenment was a period when speculation on mat- consensus as to the fundamental natur
ters of Beauty and Taste would become a casual pastime as well
objective of so much theorizing. The
that of secularization, of grounding
as a serious philosophical endeavor. In 1747 The Universal Specta-
tor remarked on those modish aspects by noting how "Of all bases
our other than established tradition
favourite words lately, none has been more in Vogue, nor cient rules.
so
long held in Esteem, as that of Taste."9 About this time the tech-
The man who brought this to a climax was Kant, who, in the
nical term "Aesthetics" was coined by the then-influential distant
Ger- Prussian town of Königsberg, unified and systematized
man thinker Alexander Baumgarten, whose Latin treatise these speculations within a larger theory of mind, as presented
Aesthetica (1750) was one of many eighteenth century attempts in the at
three Critiques. The third of these, the Critique of Judgment,
founding a systematic theory of the Beautiful. Other works eventually
in- came to be viewed as the sourcebook for the idea of
clude A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of theArt for Art's Sake, though often by commentators who had read
Sub-
lime and the Beautiful (1757) by Edmund Burke, Dissertation little
on of his work. Here follows a very brief summary of Kant's
Taste (1757) by Hume, and An Essay on Taste (1759) by Alexander argument: The experience of beauty has to do neither with per-
Gerard in England; the article "Beau" by Diderot in the French sonal gratification nor with rational concepts. A judgment on the
Encyclopédie (1751); and the Laocoön (1766) by Lessing
beautyin
of an object goes beyond immediate pleasure and claims
Germany - to cite only some of the more outstanding universal
pre- assent. Such a judgment is the manifestation of a free
Kantian efforts. The theoretical approaches of these and
works
disinterested imagination. The disinterested imagination
would vary according to the respective philosophical doctrines of
sees no concept and no purpose to be served by the beautiful ob-
each author, but there were a few basal assumptions. One jectsuch
being contemplated. Free beauty has the quality of
assumption was that there exists a phenomenon of the aesthet-"purposiveness without purpose"; a beautiful object has formal
ical whereby objects and experiences are concerned primarily purposiveness, but no ulterior purpose.
with beauty rather than with utility, morals, or truth. Another That
as-is how Kant's aesthetic theory has more or less come to
sumption was that there exists a certain part of the human besoul,
known to us today. And yet, as with Shaftesbury, within his
a mental faculty that responds with a serene contemplation thirdbe- Critique Kant makes no overt claims to be radically
fore objects of art and beauty. separating Beauty from Morality or Truth (in spite of a general
At the same time these theorists of the beautiful, being reputation to the contrary). Kant's philosophy of Beauty is but a
thinkers of broad intellect and general culture rather thancomponent
liter- block within the grand edifice of his overall philoso-
ary specialists, were also seeking the links and relationships,
phytheof Mind. It is therefore impossible fully to grasp the objec-
ways in which the aesthetic realm connects and fits with our
tives, the insights, and the import of his Critique of Judgment with-
other mental faculties. As Ernst Cassirer points out, "The union
out having also studied his Critiques of Pure Reason and Practical
9 Cited in James T. Boulton, "Editor's Introduction" to Edmund Burke, A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (Notre Dame, 10 Ernst Cassirer,
1958), p. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz C.A. Koelln and James
xxvii. P. Pettegrove (Princeton, 1951), p. 275.

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 424 SCIENCE & SOCIETY ART FOR ART'S SAKE 425

Reason, inasmuch as Kant frequently links come the aesthetic

"dull" argu-
and the mind "discontented
(170). Envisioning
ments of the third Critique with the epistemological and a shared role for Ar
ethical
concerns proper to his earlier twin treatises. For example,
up his section on Aestheticre-Judgments w
garding epistemology, Kant observes that, "the although in Artfor
true propaedeutic the
the foundati
aesthetical attributes take the place of ordinary
opment of logical exposi-
moral ideas and the culture o
tion, those aesthetical attributes nonetheless
onlyserve
when to "enliven
sensibility isthe
brought into
mind . . ., [to] accompany the logical and genuine
stimulate taste
thecan assume a definite in
imagina-
tion so that it thinks more by their aid." In a
wheel word,
comes fullaesthetical
circle: Beauty can serv
experience exists alongside our cognitive ity, but Morality
capacities, and can also serve as fou
indeed
it helps enrich them (158).11 Kant's advocacy of what, in retrospect,
pour l'art, actually
Regarding ethics, Kant again echoes Shaftesbury, had as its broader pr
and estab-
lishes causal and developmental links between
cial and the Beautiful
moral and
beings, the human proces
the Good. Of course, when discoursing onilized - of which
the intrinsic the love
nature ofof Beauty is
Beauty, Kant rules out any narrow or simplistic moral preoccu-
pations: "the feeling for the beautiful ... is hardly compatible Ill
with the moral interest" (141). He does indicate, however, that
trained receptivity to Beauty can aid inKant's the growth
aesthetic theory was oftoMorals,
exert considerable influence
and conversely, that moral growth can dispose
shortly thereafter in us toPoet-playwright
Europe. Beauty. Schiller was to take
"Taste," he observes, "makes possible the transition
the concluding speculationsfrom the
of Kant as basis for an inspired
charm of sense to habitual moral interest" civilizing (200).
project of hisBoth
own, as setthe
forth inSub-
the Letters on Aesthetic
lime and the Beautiful "are purposive in reference to the
Education (1795), probably moral
the greatest aesthetic treatise ever
feeling." The Beautiful, for instance, "prepares us to
written. In France, love
Kantian disin-
theory came into circulation via the
terestedly something, even nature itself' work of (108).
popularizers And and young though
professors, and eventually it
Kant is sufficiently sagacious to note that "connoisseurs
trickles down into Bohemia. In in taste
this slow process, Kant's philoso-
. . . generally are given up to idle, capricious, and mischievous
phy of art was to become much simplified and debased, filtered
passions," at the same time he can unabashedly as it was through state
individuals (doubtless
who lacked the background, time
under the influence of Rousseau) that "to and take sheer an immediate
stamina to take on the Critiqueinter-of Judgment, let alone
est in the beauty of nature ... is always wrestle a mark of a
with the intricacies good
of Pure soul,"
Reason and Practical Reason.
and that this interest "indicates a frame of mind favorable to the
And so Kant's complex ideas were in effect reduced to a few set
moral feeling" (141, emphasis in original). It is no accident that phrases and slogans; his grand synthesis was lost, his global total-
the final full chapter dealing with aesthetics in the third Critique ity ignored - much as we see happen today with the thought of
bears the title "Beauty as Symbol of Morality" (196). Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud or Adam Smith. Distorted and
In his parting aesthetic arguments Kant dwells on the need melted down by some agile-witted Parisiens, the aesthetic theory
to create ties between Beauty and Ethics, and he foresees dam- of Kant was soon recast as ideological buckshot for use in sectar-
age ensuing should those ties not be acknowledged or strength- ian disputes.12
ened. He warns: "If the beautiful arts are not brought into more The Gallicization of Kant begins, ironically, during Napole-
or less close combination with moral ideas," the Spirit can be-
ll Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans, with an introduction by J.H. Bernard 12 For a pioneering account of this process, I am indebted to John D. Wilcox, "The
(New York, 1951), p. 158. Subsequent page references will be made in the body of Beginnings of Vari pour V art," journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 11 (1953), pp.
the text. 360-377.

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 426 SCIENCE & SOCIETY ART FOR ART'S SAKE 427

her rue
on's dictatorship, when a number of French Royale apartments,
progressives were where he
living in exile in Germany. Among thoseAuguste
émigréSchlegel.
figures Soon
wasthereafter a 2
Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), known today for mostly
Germany for with histhe ro- express aim of e
mantic novel Adolphe, a kind of French most heir illustrious
to minds.
Goethe'sThere he knocked
Young on doors, met
Schleiermacher, Goethe,
Werther. Constant was an energetic and multifaceted and even Hegel,for
dabbler, charmed virtually ev-
whom the life of letters was a casual pursuiterybody, toat one
be point
undertaken
was briefly and unfairly as detained by Prus-
vigorously as gambling, womanizing, and sianantimonarchist activ-
authorities on a vague political charge, and in the sympathy
protests that ensued
ism, in all of which he showed especial talents. Duringgained renown
his in his
Ger-native land.
man phase Constant managed to rub shoulders Back in France a Schiller
with chair of philosophy
and at the Sorbonne was
Schelling and their select circle of friends,accorded
and tohe Cousin, and in that
kept official capacity he was to bring
a remark-
able if uneven diary of those years. In an off something
entry of a miracle:
under he gave aCon-
1804 series of lectures about
stant writes, "Had a chat with Robinson, aKant that were based
disciple of on Schelling.
minimal reading of Kant - deciphered
His study of the aesthetics of Kant has some in the mainlively
from poor ideas."
Latin translations
The - as well as much
initial words of the sentence fragmentclever that follows
guesswork on his part. must be
The students, however, adored
quoted in Constant's original French: "L'art pour
Victor Cousin l'art,
the orator with
and professor, and no
he is to this day me-
purpose, since any purpose will denature art. morialized
But by aart
wide street
does bearing his name alongside the
attain
a purpose which it does not have."13 This Sorbonne.
of course is Kantian
aesthetics at its most rudimentary. It is also Those the lectures
first were published in varied
recorded in- and multiple edi-
stance of the collocation l'art pour l'art, though tions, the first
presumably
in 1826, under a lengthynot and all-embracing title.
yet as a readymade phrase. The prose style of the lectures is resoundingly cadenced and elo-
Constant's acquaintance with these literati quent,heluminously
owed beautiful;
chiefly the content
to is most charitably de-
that brilliant and legendary Baroness of letters, scribed as a grab-bag
Mme.ofGerminie received ideas, stock phrases, well-
de Staël, whose lover he was from 1794 to turned1811. StaëPs
commonplaces, graceful
and bits and pieces lifted from contem-
and highly readable introduction to the German porary German cultural
thought. (Cousinscene,
unashamedly christened his
De l'Allemagne, first appeared in 1810 but doctrine became "Eclecticism.")
truly Among influen- those bits and pieces was a
tial only after the fall of Napoleon in 1814. The lengthy
highly simplified book And although the
look at Kantian aesthetics.
grew out of her political exile, a time when she
eventual captivated
severing of art from ourmanyother mental faculties has not
a German luminary and also irritated a yet few - Schiller,
been fully for Kantian
realized, those complex ex- ties that did con-
ample, who closed his doors to her. Of nect Kant's
Beauty withphilosophy
Morals and Truth now she have, in Cousin's ver-
seems to have read rather little, and in discussing sion, become tenuous, his less work
visible, andshe
a bit too superficially
depends mostly on hearsay, but the fact remains
rendered. The lecturesthat it was
show a familiar drift toward compart-
Mme. de Staël who first brought the news mentation,of Kant,
including Goethe,
aesthetic separatism, as exemplified in
Schiller, and the Schlegels to a French readership Cousin's oft-quotedlargely bored
flourish, "II faut de la religion pour la reli-
with official neoclassicism, and in a mood gion, to de seek out
la morale pouralternate
la morale, comme de l'art pour l'art."14
literary ways. Whether the phrase "l'art pour l'art" - ever so slightly high-
Among the excited readers of De l'Allemagne was an ambi- lighted, and strategically placed to end a sentence - is being
tious young philosophy student named Victor Cousin. Smitten specifically invoked as set formula is not clear in context. A rea-
by the Baroness's intellectual Baedeker, he showed up one day at
14 Victor Cousin, Cours de philosophie professée a la faculté des lettres pendant Vannée 1818 sur
13 Benjamin Constant, Journal intime, ed. D. Melegari (Paris, 1925), p. 8. le fondement des idées absolues du vrai, du beau et du bien (Paris, 1836), p. 224.

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428 SCIENCE & SOCIETY
sonable guess is that Cousin here articulates
was becoming a shared idea among the
sian intellects. Cousin's use of the phrase Orientales
cause.
Today we generally associate Art for Art's Sake withace
servatism or at best apoliticism. In France, however, literary
ideas tend to be closely bound up with political partisanship,
during its early phase the theory of l'art pour l'art belongedlarly,
broad party of the antimonarchist Left. The Restoration of
had brought back not only old régime nobles and Bourbon throw
but also their tired literary dogmas of neoclassicism. Conse-
quently any spokesman for Art for Art's Sake found himself
facto in opposition to ruling doctrines - political as wellwas
tural. Victor Cousin, for instance, though not of heroic mould,
held to a mildly republican and libertarian stance along with
aestheticist views. Not surprisingly, with the assassination worn of the neoclassical unities, there now em
duc de Berry and the subsequent rightwing repression of
Cousin and other like-minded intellectuals were removed from
their university posts. For an eight-year period they did editing
tasks and taught privately, their dissident ideas forming part of a
kind of ideological underground.
In this climate there emerged an informal alliance uniting
militant liberals (who hated the Bourbon crown) with bur-
geoning Romantics and defiant aesthetes (who hated the retro-
grade culture of the Bourbon crown). The literary and
countercultural part of the struggle reached its climax at the leg-
endary battle of Hernani on February 25, 1830. That pictur-
esque, "Spanish" verse melodrama of Victor Hugo had its much-
awaited debut at the august old playhouse of the Comédie
Française, where the opposing factions would take their combat
positions a full eight hours in advance. Hugo's youthful defend-
ers wore Spanish cloaks and Robespierre-style waistcoats, and
poet Théophile Gautier gained instant notoriety with his
shoulder-length hair and lobster-colored vest. The moment
arrived: at the very sound of the unorthodox metrics of Hugo's
opening lines, the neoclassicist-conservative stalwarts tried to
hoot the play down, but the playwright's enthusiasts responded
by stamping their feet en masse, and in the end the Hugo party
carried the day. French Romanticism was officially launched.
Victor Hugo himself had played a decisive role in the
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ART FOR ART'S SAKE 429
and lets
anticlassicist float
phase what
of the doctrine of l
anmore
Art for"advanced" Pari-
Art's Sake approach in his e
is thus both (1829). He also
effect and furnished t
Romantics in their struggle against Cla
con-to his closet play Cromwell, where
dom against the tyranny of systems an
and
régime in literature parallel to the old
to the in the preface to Hernani Hugo a
is1814
nothing more than liberalism in lite
kings off "the old poetic forms tog
forms."16 With the liberal revolution o
lation
ipso of "Citizen King" Louis Philip
as cul-
definitively won for the new socia
Soon thereafter, however, Hugo's ins
his without rules would prove illuso
ture
1820,governing such matters as output
rules
dictated by the culture of the literary
IV
Since 1789, a vast change had been taking place in the institu-
tional literary machinery of Europe. Under the ancien régime, art
had existed almost exclusively under the sway of princely pa-
tronage. Louis XIV, for example, set up an entire in-house sys-
tem for art and literature, bringing in teams of Italian painters
and sculptors and lodging them around the grand palace in
Versailles. The great dramatist Jean Racine was officially the
royal historian, and Corneille actually had the title of "royal up-
holsterer."17 According to Balzac, before the Revolution "seven
out of twelve writers received considerable pensions paid by for-
eign sovereigns, by the court, or by the regime."18 Authorial def-
erence was the norm for crafting of dedications as well as for
15 Victor Hugo, "Préface" to Cromwell in Theatre complet (Paris, 1964), Vol. 1, pp. 444,
451.
16 Ibid., "Préface" to Hernani, p. 1147.
17 Cesar Grana, Modernity and its Discontents: French Society and the Man of Letters m the
Nineteenth Century (New York, 1967), p. 46.
18 Cited in James Smith Allen, Popular French Romanticism: Authors, Readers, and Books in
the Nineteenth Century (Syracuse, 1981), p. 89.
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 430 SCIENCE fcf SOCIETY ART FOR ART'S SAKE 431

In 1814, in
public performances of art works. Lord Halifax there were 2,500 commerci
Augustan
1826, formal
England thought nothing of interrupting Pope's there were almost 8,300.22
reading
of his translation of the Iliad in order to suggest some
The basic poetical
impetus for all this activ
improvements. 19 - to increase production in order to
The publishing trade before 1800 was by and
mands large
of the a
triumphant middle classe
preindustrial and precapitalist affair. A mere 36 printers were
less sophisticated in their literary tas
allowed to operate under the old Bourbon monarchy.20
aristocracy, were Books
nonetheless hungry f
were issued in small quantities - a thousand But copies maximum
at the same time, in typical marke
- and were disposed of primarily throughsorts subscriptions
of advancesto the increases in sale
made
wealthy. Four decades of revolutionary turmoil inclassic
In his France, how- of market society
history
ever, were to do away with aristocratic hegemony
"since elaborateand its
machines are expensi
institutionalized patronage of the literary arts.
largeInto the resulting
amounts of goods are produced. .
vacuum there now moved the economic liberalism of the free means that all factors involved must be
market, which rapidly became and to this day remains the domi- be available in the needed quantities to
nant means for mass-scale reproduction and general distribution to pay for them. . . . All incomes mu
of the written language. something or other."23 Such precisel
The print market gained immeasurable powers through the newly technified literary market: co
industrialization of the book trade. In 1798 a Frenchman named chines could produce in high quantiti
Nicolas-Louis Robert devised the first papermaking machine ties was necessary in order to pay off
and thus raised hourly yield by a factor of ten. The idea was This economic, demographic, and t
then pirated by British entrepreneurs Gamble and Fourdrinier, was to make for truly spectacular grow
and in turn was put to work in the 1810s by the Didot family ries: journalism and fiction. The new
mills in the Somme. Over the next two decades a paper made know it emerged in the first half of t
from timber was evolved, helping to solve the problem of scar- deed we can pinpoint the exact year in
city of rags. In 1790 William Nicolson invented the rubber ink one with the marketplace: 1836, w
roller, and in 1808 Pierre Lorilleux was the first to industrially Girardin halved the subscription p
produce ink. The actual print process showed dramatic Presse, choosing to stay afloat not from
technological advances. Iron rather than wood was adopted as advertising revenue. The journalis
basic material for printing machines, rendering them more re- brought into close contact with the
sistant to stress. Manual operation gave way to footpedals and goods. Other French newspapers quic
then to steam, leading to enormous increases in output.21 The to survive.24
fastest hand press could print 250 sheets per hour at most; by Fiction had coexisted with journalism since the pioneering
1834, mechanical presses were printing 3,600 sheets per hour. days of Defoe, who excelled in both. After 1830, however, the
The most dynamic sector of the French Restoration economy free market and new technologies would allow for vastly ex-
was printed matter, with annual growth rates of nine per cent. panded productivity. Those writers capable of keeping up with

19 Grana, p. 37. 22 Allen, pp. 127-28.

20 Eric de Grolier, Histoire du livre (Paris, 1954), p. 93. 23 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time
21 Ibid. , p. 1 14. Henry Joseph George, The Development of French Romanticism: The Impact (Boston, 1957), p. 41.
of the Industrial Revolution on Literature (Syracuse, 1955), pp. 19-22. Colin Clair, A His- 24 Albert Cassagne, La théorie de l'art pour l'art en France chez les derniers romantiques et les
tory of Printing in Britain (London, 1965), p. 208ff. Allen, op. cit., p. 112. premiers réalistes (Paris, 1906), pp. 19-20.

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432 SCIENCE fcf SOCIETY
demand were to accumulate hitherto unheard-of fortunes.
There was Balzac, who spent twelve hours a day at his desk,
producing thirty pages per sitting. There was Alexandre Dumas,
who wrote 100,000 lines a year at 1.5 francs per line.25 And on
another level there was the prolific Paul de Kock, who in his
Memoirs was frank enough to say, "I'm greedy and I admit it."26
Certain subgenres cropped up, and again they benefited those
authors able to satisfy subgenre conventions. In England there
was the three-volume novel, the "three-decker." Trollope, who
in his Autobiography took great pleasure in describing how he
produced forty pages a week and had cranked out Barchester
Towers on a train, urged all young novelists to work in the three-
volume format.
And there was the serial novel, the roman feuilleton. Fusing
narrative arts with journalistic rhythms, serial novels began run-
ning side by side with advertisements and articles in Parisian pa-
pers in the 1830s. This in turn boosted readership. Eugene Sue
got 100,000 francs from Le Constitutionnel for The Wandering Jew;
as soon as the novel began appearing, circulation leaped from
3000 to 40,000.27 Sainte-Beuve scorned this as "industrialized lit-
erature," while Champfleury gladly likened fiction in the press
to steam power in the factory.28 However one felt about the phe-
nomenon, it was only mass-produced print that allowed authors
to earn their keep from output alone. Before 1790 there existed
neither the cheap paper, printing machines, nor large market to
make the rapid composing of thick tomes or weekly copy a prof-
itable or even conceivable enterprise.
On the other hand, the place of poetry in the new market
system was inevitably slight. A basic reason for this is poetry's
own intrinsic nature. As Roman Jakobson demonstrated in his
pathbreaking article, poetry is a species of art in which the domi-
nant emphasis falls neither on the thing spoken about, nor on
the speaker, nor on the person spoken to, but on the verbal fab-
ric of the message itself.29 The "nexus between sound and mean-
25 Grana, p. 34.
26 Cited in Allen, p. 96.
27 Grana, p. 34.
28 Cassagne, p. 21.
29 Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," in The Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-
Strauss, ed. Richard arid Fernande DeGeorge (New York, 1972), pp. 85-122.
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ART FOR ART'S SAKE 433
ing" may be negligible in a news re
tance in a realist novel, but it is th
simplest and briefest of lyrics. The d
poem's linguistic materials is of ove
within a mere fourteen lines such th
ties and contrasts, verbal and other p
devices, and non-referential figure
the key role by calling attention to
matter of choice of words, but of the
the overall make-up of a poetical pag
ings are somewhat analogous to those
like narrative prose pages, which ar
linear in their mode of operation. To
further: the music of poetry is lik
Verdi.
Owing precisely to the linguistic density of their medium,
the majority of poets in history have been slow producers. Virgil
reportedly used to complete three lines a day, and that effusive
Welshman Dylan Thomas would feel satisfaction on having
crafted two good lines in a day. Since classical times the poets
themselves have firmly advised a leisurely and conscientious
writing pace. Horace in the first century B.C. told young versifi-
ers that "you will make an excellent impression if you use care
and subtlety in placing your words and, by the skillful choice of
setting, give fresh meaning to a familiar word." He similarly ex-
horted readers to "have nothing to do with any poem that has
not been trimmed into shape by many a day's work and cor-
rected down to the smallest detail."30 Eighteen hundred years
later the French neoclassicist Boileau would scorn a fast pen as a
sign of poor judgment and suggest polishing every poem some
twenty times.31
Suddenly, in the nineteenth century, the poets were funda-
mentally at odds with the new system of literary production and
distribution. In retrospect, they are a painful instance of a pat-
tern studied by labor sociologist Harry Braverman, who noted
how, throughout the history of industrial capitalism, the pres-
30 Horace, "On the Art of Poetry," in Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Classical Literary Criti-
cism, trans, with introduction by T.S. Dorsch (Baltimore, 1965), pp. 80, 89.
31 Nicolas Boileau, L'art poétique, ed. Guy Riegert (Paris, 1972), Chant premier, 163-74,
p. 74.
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 434 SCIENCE & SOCIETY ART FOR ART'S SAKE 435

sure to produce more goods, for more and Average

more sales of books
markets, of poems
and at simp
ever-faster speeds, is constantly relegating traditional
per title, crafts named
and a bookseller to Lesur
tion would
the margins of society and rendering complex someday
skills replace verse.35 I
obsolete.32
The careers of the poets themselves enceprovide
of so vivid
much fastillustra-
prose in a newsp
tions of Braverman's thesis. Today we think
ows itsoffewGautier
printed as a poet,
poems, perhaps e
but his complete verse occupies two volumes,
happen towhile his journal-
be stylistically first-rate.
moreover,
ism, if compiled, would probably fill 200. Baudelaireis produced for immediat
in his life-
time was known far more for his literary criticism
seded by issues and
thathis trans-
follow, and is ev
lations of Poe, which also were his chief sources
not an idealof income.
setting forIn his
the shape an
own poetry he could revise a line dozens of times,
Coleridge spend
registered hours
his own complaint
on a single word; his complete poetrybusiness,
takes up some
and, 300 making
without pages. any th
Even if Baudelaire had printed all of lished
these a poems
primaryin newspa-
condition of poetic
pers, at fees comparable to those of poemDumas or we
which Balzac, he still
have read, but that to
wouldn't have received enough income for subsistence.
greatest Baude-
pleasure, possesses the genui
laire himself notes that literature consists
namefirst of "filling
of essential up soColeridg
poetry."36
many columns," and that a writer "has to becomes
poem sell at all kinds
itself, andof
does its
prices." And so, he goes on to say, "Today it is
rereads necessary
and to
has reread it.pro-
And obviousl
duce a great deal; hence one must work quickly . obsolescence
on periodical . . and make (the pun i
every blow count."33 On the other hand those
courage poetsanything,
rereading who, like least of al
Hugo and Lord Byron, were spontaneous Theand prolific
classic portrait-of
"naive"
this entire situ
poets, in Schiller's use of the term - in
did command
a work success
of history but inonBalzac's L
the market. It has been said that the complete poetical
third of this novel works of
of the literary life d
Hugo comprise over 150,000 lines of verse. David Séchard,
Gautier, whowho
realizes that with i
spent
20 years crafting his elegant little booka of demand
poems, forthe
cheap clothes
Emaux etand cheap
camées, has the narrator of Mademoiselle de Maupin
of his express envy
time experimenting with ways of
for those poets who "write a hundred lines fromin succession
vegetables, andwithout
he finally make
crossing out anything or looking at thehave ceiling."34
some wily entrepreneurs and shys
At the readership end of the market,as poetry
well as now led a pre-
his finances. The other more
carious existence. New non- work spaces such as
Lucien de railway
Rubempré, stations
an ambitious y
and railroad cars were not the most amenable contexts for read- Paris with dreams of fame and a manus
ing verse, and could only detract from the intrinsic intensity of which, according to other characters in
the poetical experience. In fact sales of poetry volumes peaked ter than most of the new verse being p
in 1827, when there were 537 verse titles to 295 in fiction. out that publishers prefer putting out b
Thereafter the novel gained ground even as poetry declined. keeping in Twenty Lessons or Botany fo
publishers what cotton nightcaps ar
32 Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth bought cheap and sold dear." A publi
Century (New York, 1974).
33 Charles Baudelaire, "Advice to Young Men of Letters," in Baudelaire as a Literary
Critic: Selected Essays, trans, with an introduction by Lois Boe Hyslop and Francis E. 35 Allen, op. cit., p. 131.
Hyslop Jr. (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1964), pp. 315, 317. 36 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
34 Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin (Paris, 1966), p. 253. original).

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 436 SCIENCE & SOCIETY ART FOR ARTS SAKE 437

sonally informs Lucien that as a one-book cards,poet

composing on each card until
he is unsaleable,
that only quantity sells: "Admitted that was
you're
a newacombination
good poet. andAre a formerly
you prolific? Do you produce sonnets regularly? Karl Marx, in Will you ever Theori
his posthumous
run to ten volumes? Would you be a profitable enterprise?
passing statement, Of
often quoted but n
course not."37 Discouraged in his efforts to get
talist published
production strictly
is hostile to certain a
on the merits of his verse, Lucien instead duction, pursues
such as aart
career in
and poetry."39 H
journalism, where he is quickly sucked into be noted, and thoughworld
the glittering he himself did
of fast phrases and easy money, and becomes ther, I haveglib, successful,
a partial explanation, and
and corrupt. bly clear: l'art pour l'art was the posit
thors whose specific mode of discours
V production were in conflict with the
dustrialized literary market. Though
The poet was sorcerer and seer their living within the journalistic ma
before he became "artist." His
ucts as committed lyricists stood well o
structures were not abstract art,
ket rules of output and genre. Painf
or art for its own sake. . . . [They]
ancy between their highly special tale
came into being to serve not art
of an aggressively prosperous new cult
but religion in its most basic
sense.38 a militantly defensive posture and gav
Albert B. Lord tive ideals that provided solace for the
of superiority in their craft. Their ki
Now, it is no accident that almost all authors associated with Art marginal to the dominant literary d
for Art's Sake have been essentially poets - Gautier, Baudelaire, transformed the unmarketability of t
the French Parnassians and Symbolists, the modernistas in Latin they saw as an aesthetic, spiritual, an
America, in our country Poe and later the Fugitive-Agrarians The hostile and defensive stance of
who became the New Critics. The few novelists who tended to- erary market assumes its clearest ou
ward aestheticism - Flaubert, Joyce, Nabokov - were authors prose. Gautier's "Preface" to his ero
who, out of temperament or choice, produced slowly. Flaubert's Maupin (1836) is today widely acknowl
fiction, of course, can be and is read for its social content, but he ary manifesto for the doctrine of l'ar
personally set out to make the novel into a perfect artifact, with himself may not have been fully cogn
prose as polished as any poetry. With this in mind he spent five builds on and is permeated by a popu
years of full-time work on his first novel, Madame Bovary, some- of Kantianism. "Nothing is truly beau
times giving a single paragraph a whole week's attention. Joyce's erything useful is ugly. . . . The mos
entire prose fictional output consists of four books that involved the lavatory."40 Moreover, as befits G
a total and heroic commitment to craft, twenty years in the case fairly bristles with attacks on the boo
of Finnegan's Wake. Nabokov, who felt utter contempt for the lit- business, and on industrialism per se.
erary marketplace, used to write his novels on three-by-five says, "one material, the other spiritua

39 Cited in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Literature

ings (New York, 1947), p. 28.
37 Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions, trans. Kathleen Raine (London, 1965), pp. 214, 367. 40 Théophile Gautier, "Preface" to Mademoiselle de M
38 Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (New York, 1978), pp. 67, 220. by Joanna Richardson (New York, 1981), p. 39.

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 438 SCIENCE fcf SOCIETY ART FOR ART'S SAKE 439

eludes] the thousand francs for the author's pocket

lieves, . . .;
is true for the
"master of the book," an
publisher it means a fine thoroughbred horsebook. ads, book
. .; for thedisplays,
paper or book sal
merchant, another factory on another stream,wilderness,and a means
"away from of and ignored by
counters
spoiling a fine site."41 Despite the gap that collapsing
yawns between underneath volum
that
hypothetical novelist's 1,000 francs and through
the lucrative
a privaterewards
pact with Beauty.42 B
that accrue to the businessmen, Gautier chooses
de Paristo invoke
Hugo novels
called print nothing less
because he knew that those literary productsin were
History"; he envisioned
at least selling, the huma
whereas (something he had just recently learned
press from that
and rejoiced disap-print would kil
pointing experience) poetry books were not. whereas Gautier in Mademoiselle de Ma
Taking a mocking tone toward the emerging technological
have killed architecture" much as new
environment, Gautier in an eloquent passage andremarks
artillery with feisty
has killed physical courag
glee that literature doesn't contribute to material
Excluded "progress" as
from the marketplace, po
do railroads, syringes, and seamless boots. self
Focusing
banishedmorefromspecif-
its former cultura
ically on poetry itself, he remarks that metaphors,
various times rhymes, and the craft of
in the past
Renaissance
metonymies may have no "utility" for cobblers humanism, courtly neoc
or cottonmakers
tion,been
but are extremely useful for poets. (Had Kant and secular drama;
still alive, he during the
might have noted that such devices werebeen "purposive"
a respectablewithin an
vehicle for intelle
art that has no explicit "purpose.") Gautier's most narrative.
or comical impassionedBut, in the new
invective, however, is reserved for the newspapers, place, poetry regardless
soon saw ofitself very m
their ideological hue, and he summons up Shunted
his purplest into a prose
near-absolute
in auton
exhorting King Louis Philippe to shut them down poetry
wanted, forever. nowIron-
became an art of
ically, Gautier later was to spend 36 years quasi-simultaneous,
as a daily drama re- a medium inte
viewer, hating every minute of it, feeling rhythms deprived and of the timeits
diction, tometaphors an
do what he loved best: craft exquisite verses. jor role to play in a literary culture
Similar sentiments were expressed a few mimetic, decades and linear.
later byThe noble ideal o
Mallarmé, whose poetic theme, his obsession came really, is the very
the consolation prize for those p
act of poetry and its problematic statuswith in an proseindifferent
but couldn't andwrite verse fo
hostile world. Unlike Gautier or Baudelaire, Mallarmé never sition to think otherwise.
worked in journalism, and instead established a pattern for
Williams College
many twentieth century poets by teaching (English at lycée level)
for a living. In "Quant au livre," Mallarmé's set of densely
wrought essays, the specific culprit repeatedly singled out by him
is the publishing apparatus and what he calls sarcastically "the
lofty business of letters." He alludes somberly to the "extraordi-
nary overproduction" of the press, its abject dependence on ad-
vertising, and its exclusion of art. He deplores the success of se-
rial novels at the expense of verse, and states that poetry
"doesn't sell" and moreover "shouldn't be sold." Poetry, he be- 42 "Quant au livre" in Mallarmé, ed. with an introduction and prose translations by
Anthony Hartley (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 179, 185, 188. I have slightly altered Mr.
41 Ibid., p. 37. Hartley's translations.

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