By Petra Kerkhove
Student of Celtic studies at the University of Utrecht
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated
For these there is hope
One only has to look at the first page of �The Picture of Dorian Gray� to see that these aphorisms are filled with the sense of beauty. How very representative is this book of the atmosphere of the 1890s, the decade that almost bursts with the feelings that have been sown already at the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria. This is the age of decadence and aesthetism. Oscar Wilde represents in his book the very essence of aesthetics, but where does this aesthetism and wish for beauty come from?
Beauty has always fascinated people, from the old Greek to nowadays it holds fascination, and people have thought about its meaning and role in the world. In the 19th century, there are two men who clearly stand out with their opinion on this, and those two are John Ruskin and Walter Pater. Both have had a huge influence with their written and spoken words. They seem to have a lot of things in common, but there are more differences between the two men than might at first be thought. Pater is taken as a leading figure in the 19th century Aesthetic Movement, and although in Ruskin�s ideas beauty has an important role too, he opposes the aesthetes from his time.
But what is this difference, and how come their ideas differ so much?
As both men describe and write a lot about beauty, it might be interesting to look at the meaning of this word and the implication it has on the meaning and use of literature.
In order to point this clearly out, I would first like to tell something about both men, their lives, works and ideas, before comparing them and looking at the clear differences in opinion about beauty and its role in the world, and see in what way Ruskin and Pater agree, but more, disagree.
John Ruskin was born on 8 February 1819 in London as the son of a sherry merchant, John James Ruskin, and Margaret Ruskin. His father was an art collector and encouraged the artistic qualities in his son. His mother was a devout evangelical Protestant, and she hoped deeply that her son would become an Anglican bishop. In his early youth, he travelled with his parents all over the country. Many of these visits were to the Highlands or Wales, and his love for art started when seeing on these travels the mountains.
In 1836 he is admitted to Christ Church, Oxford, where he stays for 4 years with his mother and in 1839 he wins the Newdigate Prize for poetry. After an illness he receives in 1842 his degree, and after a year he publishes the first volume of Modern Painters, the first book of a series which deals with art and the aspect of beauty, light, imagination and landscapes.
In 1848 he marries Euphemia Chalmers Gray. This marriage was not a happy one, and in 1853, after a holiday in Scotland with the Millais family, Effie leaves her husband for non-consummation, and marries John Everett Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite painter.
In the years to come, John Ruskin writes many essays, and gives lectures. In this period, he also abandons his belief in the evangelical Protestantism, and meets Rose La Touche, whom he teaches as a young girl, and falls tragically in love with her
In the 1860s he becomes Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, and he keeps writing, but at the end of this decade, Ruskin suffers his first attack of mental illness, which he keeps getting until his death. He dies on 20 January 1900 at Brantwood, his home near Coniston Water.
I would like to speak on Ruskin's theory on beauty until 1858. In that year he loses his firm faith in religion, and therefore his ideas on beauty change too. From that time on, Ruskin's mental state becomes very feeble, and he suffers his first mental diseases. His ideas shift and turn from that time, and it is difficult to get a clear idea from his intentions. Since before that time his ideas, though not completely free from paradox, are easier to comprehend, and are more extended, I like to stick to that time.
Ruskin started formulating his beauty theories in order to defend Turner, when he was criticised at the Royal Academy. To Ruskin, Turner's paintings hold the very essence of beauty, and in the first volume of his "Modern Painters", he tries to point this out.
The 18th century ideas on beauty are based on emotion, and do not relate to the external qualities, but to the psychological experiences of man. Ruskin though, speaks about the metaphysical element of beauty. He connects beauty to man�s moral and religious nature. The purpose of beauty is to express the nature of God. That may man never forget, and simply take beauty as incidental pleasure: it is the gift from God, not something that man can or has created. Beauty equals God. And because beauty is a reflection of God�s nature in visible things, it could therefore not vary, and not depend on association or custom.
Ruskin speaks about �the emotions of the Beautiful and Sublime�, but he seems to contradict himself when he speaks these words, because emotion is subjective, and Ruskin sees beauty as an objective and unchanging existence, opposed to the ideas of the British moral philosophers of the 18th and 19th century. They connect beauty to moral sense, and though this sense was basically unchanging, beauty could change, and custom is an important role in determining the ideas of beauty. Ruskin opposes to this idea, and says that something like custom could not have much effect on beauty, because it is always changing. Unity is the perfection of everything.
Archibald Alison was the first to use association in relation to all things beautiful. Ruskin opposes this Associationism for two reasons: firstly, of course, for it denies the objective permanence of beauty, but also because this is a purely aesthetic theory, because it cannot be related back to anything moral or metaphysical, only to the individual mind. To Ruskin, God�s idea of beauty could not be perceived through association or custom, because it is only derived from the pure beauty. The problem with association is that it is not about the object that holds beauty, but the things we associate it with. This association has only come into existence by the mere chance connections of our experience and the working of our mind. Therefore, the beauty removes from the external, and enters an individual mind.
Ruskin, though, doesn�t completely deny the importance of association, but to him it�s a more personal association than the Rational Association, which may be defined in Ruskin�s own words as �the interest which any object may bear historically, as having been in some way connected with the affairs or affections of men; an interest shared in the minds of all who are aware of such connection�. This personal association is important because emotions leave their mark on the substantial (abstract) things they come from, and Ruskin sees that for some people it is difficult to separate the association from the real beauty. Still, he insists that beauty and association are independent.
He understands that there is a difficulty in accepting that beauty only has relations with the external without emotional elements. He therefore speaks about the identical emotions received from visual qualities. Everyone reacts the same because it is God�s will. To make this agreeable, he has to eliminate the subjective ideas of the earlier aestheticians, but he does not completely succeed in this.
Ruskin divides beauty in two different forms, in order to make the contradictions of his theory a bit more clear. At first, he speaks about Typical Beauty, the symbols of the order that is the nature of God. His above named ideas fit easily in this idea. He also names a Vital Beauty; the beauty of living things, created by moral order.
Whereas Vital Beauty is more concerned with expression, i.e. emotion and internal reactions, Typical Beauty is an aspect of universal order and relates to external form, which is huge and God given. Typical Beauty therefore has a religious basis, but although Vital Beauty has not, religion plays still an important role in this beauty too, for man should achieve happiness, achievable through religion. Man's function is to obey God's law, and this creates happiness. To Ruskin, being happy, whether this is man, animal of other living creature, implies being beautiful.
These two beauties are connected in the way that we need to see the outside form clearly in order to perceive the moral truth.
This idea of Vital Beauty seems far off from Ruskin's general idea that beauty is from God, because it is focussed on the individual experience. One can maybe understand it better if I repeat the thought of Ruskin that moral decisions are made by the emotions, and not by reason, though difficulty stays.
Ruskin treats painting and poetry as analogous arts. To him, both are ways to express. He does not state that both arts are the same because of the entertainment and education that is to be gained of it by imitating nature, but because both are concerned with the expression of emotion. That he considers both arts to be closely related, is to be seen in his saying that he sees painting as a form of language.
Beauty in art can have two didactic functions. First, the function of art is to develop and perfect man's moral perceptions. Seeing beauty in art can teach moral sympathy. To Ruskin, just as beauty, art serves a purpose. Like I pointed out in the chapter above, to Ruskin, beauty holds a high moral essence, and therefore, perceiving this beauty in art can teach man something on morality, and morality is the logical way to obeying God's law. Secondly, beauty is the symbol of God, and the perception of this shows His nature to man. Therefore, God can be seen through all beauty that is shown in the world. "You have cut yourselves off voluntarily, presumptuously, insolently, from the whole teaching of your Maker in His universe" (16.289). To overcome this, man can turn to art, and remind him of that which he has lost, and even to some extent restore it.
Art has a high value, for it educates people about the past, since it covers the essence of the grandeur of gone days. Holding this information, art tells people what to avoid and what to do. It is the representation of cultures that have passed, and through perception of this art, one can take notion of the good and bad things, and learn from it.
Poetry and painting both should, and can, represent visual fact. But not mere the fact of appearance, but more the impression of fact according to the artist, which Ruskin calls the truth of experience. Art in this way concerns with man and the phenomenological relations of man to this world. Its value lies in it that man can feel and see with the faculties of one higher than himself. For an artist is greater than the 'normal man', according to Ruskin, and looking at a work of an artist, one can learn.
Though he approves of the moral role art has, he rejects the name of didactic poetry and painting, for they are didactic in their essence, not in conception. It is no use calling poetry and painting didactic when it is their main function and appearance anyhow, or say it the other way around: there is no art that is not didactic, so why light some of the arts out by calling it �didactic�?
Art cannot be practised only in one's spare time, but should be taken seriously. "Art, properly so called, is no recreation; it cannot be learned at spare moments, nor pursued when we have nothing better to do. It is no handiwork for drawing-room tables, no relief of the ennui of boudoirs; it must be understood and undertaken seriously, or not at all. To advance it men's lives must be given, and to receive it, their hearts"
It is not difficult to see that to Ruskin art has the same purpose as philosophy had to Plato: it will lead man to the Good.
Life and work
Walter Horatio Pater is born on 4 August in 1839 in East London as the son of Richard Glode Pater, a surgeon, what now would be called a general practitioner, and Maria Hill. Pater has, when he is young, the aspiration to become a priest, though he never has been a �true� Christian. When he is only a child, his father dies, and this is to have a deep impact on the young Walter. The family moves to Enfield, and there Pater grows up.
In 1858 he goes to Queen�s College, Oxford, where he reads Classics and is highly influenced by John Ruskin. In 1864 he is chosen as fellow to Brasenose College, and he stays there practically his whole life teaching and writing. In the years to come he travels a lot especially to France and Italy, and he writes essays. In 1973 his first book, �The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry�, is published, and it receives bad critics. His second book, �Marius the Epicurean�, follows in 1885, and when in 1889 his �Appreciations: With an Essay on Style� is published, he seems to have gained a certain degree of fame. However, Pater is not the man to stand in the limelight, and he lives his life dividing his time between Oxford and London, together with his two sisters Hester and Clara. He dies in Oxford on 30 July 1894.
Pater never intended to teach his audience, but he only wanted to write his own ideas and experience down, more than bringing a message to the people. Therefore it's difficult to talk about Pater's theories being real theories: it are more collected ideas that form a way of life. I will try to write down though what in general Pater's ideas were, but without having the intention to be complete, because indeed they are not founded in some overall theory, and also because his ideas -just like Ruskin's- are full of paradox..
'It doesn't matter what is said as long as it is said beautifully'. To Pater there is nothing as terrible as a book written in bad style. With this, his idea fits perfectly in the 'art for art's sake' thought. Like Oscar Wilde said in his preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray': 'All art is quite useless'. Art only serves its own purpose, being beautiful, and is not a way to carry out a message.
Beauty is the highest good one can gain, and to Pater it is also the only significant experience there is. Experience is a rich, mysterious, elusive process, which art alone can arrest into significant moments.
Because to him there is no complete and eternal truth, one should not care for finding truth, and just take all the moments' joy one can get from beauty, pleasure and amusement. �To define beauty, not in the most abstract but in the most concrete terms possible, to find not its universal formula, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true students of aesthetics�. It is not about an all-encompassing definition, but the small fragments that can make an impression of beauty. To Pater one should not look at eternity, but the single experience. No definition of the word beauty will touch its true meaning anyhow. '�speculating how one who had always been desirous of beauty, but desired it always in such precise and definite forms, as hands or flowers of hair, looked forward now into the vague land, and experienced the last curiosity'.
A world without an eternal truth has two implications. First, eliminating the eternal, it means there is only the 'moment'. Pater indeed says we should all enjoy beauty as it comes to us, because he knows all things change and do not stay. 'Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art's sake has most; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake'. Secondly, Pater eliminates a God, for a God must be omnipotent and therefore eternal. If nothing stays, there cannot be a God to rule everything. Art and history are free from religion. Believing this, Pater can only enjoy the aesthetics of a church service.
In Pater's aesthetics, there is a strong connection between contradictions. Beauty, pleasure and all other things of joy have all their dark sides. This dark side is not condemned, but embraced as belonging to beauty too. The theory of the synthesis of 'good and evil' is somewhat a contradiction in itself. Where there is a strong wish for all things beautiful, there is the knowledge of the feeling, picture or sense opposed to this, and instead of abhorring it, it is used to indicate the wish for the beauty. 'The fear of death was intensified by the desire of beauty', Pater is to write in his semi-autobiographical work 'The Child in the House'. Death, and other dark events that excite, only emphasize the experience of the moment. One should enjoy every joyous moment one can, because after that, there is the decline.
Pater's ideas resemble a lot of Epicurus (his influence can also be seen in Pater's book 'Marius the Epicurean') who says that one should enjoy everything: pleasure is the highest good. When one dies, one simply vanishes, so there is nothing to worry about after death, and man can better make something nice of his life. Of course, Pater has not taken over his complete ideas, but the -reproaching name of- hedonism comes quite close to Pater�s look on life. 'Not the fruit of experience but experience itself is the end'. The brevity of all things existing, somewhat forces man to enjoy every single moment of pleasure one can gain: it is only these single moments you will get to enjoy.
Art for art�s sake implies that art should not serve another purpose but itself. There is no moral essence, no wish for teaching, just the impression of art how it comes to man. Art should show indifference to the content, except as material for the form; it is only the beauty that counts. However, this function of mere pleasure out of beauty can be called a function in se too.
To Pater, every art has its own beauty, and should be looked at as having its own special touches and elements. The arts together are not existing as one art. Each art is not just a mere translation of the same thought into a different language.
'Nature imitates art', says one aphorism in the preface to 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. This is of course a saying of Wilde and not of Pater, but it is true that Pater thought that one should look for inspiration in art more than in nature.
�With literature as with painting, the masterpiece serves as a kind of prism to history, refracting all its varied forms of light onto a brilliant, unified image of crystalline beauty�. Though there is no other essence but the fragments of beauty, Pater speaks about a �prism to history�. This seems to imply that art has another function than just the pleasing element, i.e. showing people the pictures of history. Pater only acknowledges the reality of the past as it survives in vivid impressions of the present, which means, discovering history through the senses. Beauty of the past can be found in society as well as in art. Therefore, in that way, beauty is still the main purpose, and the contradiction seems not to be a true contradiction.
That Pater sees prose as more difficult than poetry, becomes clear from a dialogue Wilde mentioned to have had with him: 'Who do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult'. The reason that Pater said this to Wilde could have been because poetry has more rules than prose, and if one wants to write poetically, it will easily become poetry. It is difficult to let it stay prose, but containing all the richness and lyrical music that is so familiar to verses. These rules though can also mean a restriction with the function of a guide to writing. In order to write poetry, one should follow the rules of metre, rhyme and other prescriptions -for at that time the free verse did not exist yet- and there were no such rules for prose, so one has to make them up themselves. Wilde could not understand this, until he came to read �The Renaissance� of Pater, and saw that prose indeed can contain all the lyrical qualities of poetry.
When he looks at art, Pater focuses on the individual, and the individual experience. It is not about the truth of art, because how can one ever know what the truth of it is? The real important element in art is how the onlooker personally looks at it. It is about the associations and impressions that are aroused when perceiving a piece of art.
'What constitutes an artistic gift is first of all a natural susceptibility to moments of strange excitement, in which the colours freshen upon our threadbare world, and the routine of things about us is broken by a novel and happier synthesis'. This shows clearly the inspirited moment of the artist, in almost the literal meaning of the word of the Latin 'in-spirare', blow into. It seems to be that art is not for a selected group of people, but everyone can be inspired. The artistic gift seems not to be a gift forever, a static ability, but mere the chance to be open to the impression of inspiration.
Most of the differences and similarities have already become clear in pointing out their ideas, but I would like to briefly sum them up, to make them more striking.
When Pater was at Oxford, he took notice of Ruskin, and read his works. He was influenced by him, but more than he followed his footsteps, he adapted Ruskin's thoughts and moulded them into his own ideas. Ruskin's influence can be seen in Pater's work, but clearly, he went another way.
The first thing that stands out is the intention of both men. Whereas Ruskin started his theories of beauty as a defence of Turner, and therefore with the intention to tell the society something, Pater never wanted to have followers and preach his ideas. He more had the wish to express himself, and point his ideas clearly out, without the pretension to be a man with a message. Therefore it sometimes looks as if we have only fragments of ideas that could form a true theory if Pater had wanted to create one.
Where Ruskin emphasises the divine element in life, Pater stresses the hasty touch of beauty. Pater does not believe in the eternal presence of beauty, and says we should live, enjoying the sheer beauty of beauty. Ruskin opposes this idea, for the simple reason that there is a God, who shows his nature through beauty on this earth, and a God cannot be a passing existence. This might be the biggest difference between the two men, because most of Ruskin's ideas are based on his belief, and Pater's on exact the opposite: his belief in transitoriness.
Therefore too can Ruskin never accept that art is the source from which one should gain his inspiration. Nature comes directly from God, and is only a representation of His nature. In fact, he says the same about art as Plato does: art is an image of an image, but whereas Plato condemns art for this, Ruskin does not, but he sees that art never can be bigger than nature.
It is also striking that the world to Ruskin is all-encompassing, and he treats everything out of the whole and nature of God, where Pater�s universe deals from within. He takes the individual and reasons from his outlook on the world. It is all about the personal experience and the place of man in this world. Ruskin looks at God, and how that is reflected on this world. It is not about man and his own ideas, but the general characteristics and emotions in art as the expression of the divine.
Connected to this, Pater does not give art another function than itself, so no difficult theories on literature apart from its pure beauty, and all that should be done to gain this pleasure. Since in Ruskin�s universe there is the presence of an omnipotent God, so beauty gets a moral function, instead of the plain and �neutral� joy. Art should also show indifference to the content, according to Pater. There is no use to tell that for Ruskin it is a little bit different.
Ruskin sees the arts together as one art, where Pater stresses the diversity and the special beauty of each art. This is easily to understand when one takes the importance of the individual. To Ruskin everything is part of a huge whole, and art is only a part in this. It�s the whole look on the world that changes the focus of both men.
A good illustration of the difference between the two men is the way they both treat La Jioconda. Pater sees this painting as a classic example of the definition 'art'. The famous words he uses to describe her is: 'She is older than the rocks among which she sits�' Ruskin on the other hand only briefly writes about the Mona Lisa, and in that description he only speaks about the scenery, the rocks in the background.
Look at these two men and they seem to have a lot in common: both student and don at Oxford, both writer and critic, both influenced by a lot of same persons, and both stressing the essence of beauty. But exactly the last is the very thing that makes the two men so opposed. Because of the element of God, beauty has for Ruskin a moral and religious meaning. Art including literature, is for him a way to admit God showing his presence to mankind. The lacking of such a divine eternity, means to Pater that it is about the plain and clear beauty that one should admire, and thus removing a moral basis. Literature fits in the name of 'Art for art's sake', which creates the exact opposed thought of Ruskin: that simple pleasure is the highest good, and therefore he is accused -just like Epicurus- of immoral hedonism.
I have not spoken of the reasons that the fin-du-si�cle of the 19th century is filled with the �by some people called �immoral�- decadence, and I do not attempt to: that is a whole other subject, but it might be a bit easier to place the importance of beauty in this century. Especially Oscar Wilde was influenced by both men, and he has adapted a lot of thoughts of them. And though Ruskin and Pater contradict each other on a lot of subjects and thoughts, is the influence of both not reflected in this little paradox of Wilde? �The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved�.
Hewison, Robert, John Ruskin, The Argument of the Eye, Thames and Hudson, 1976
Landow, George, The Aesthetic and Critical Studies of John Ruskin, Princeton University Press, 1971
Levey, Michael, The Case of Walter Pater, Thames and Hudson, 1978
Stein, Richard L, The Ritual of Interpretation: The Fine Arts as Literature in Ruskin, Rossetti and Pater, Harvard University Press, 1975
On the internet I have had a lot of help from the extended Victorian Web by George Landow
