LITERARY ART AND MORALITY

M. A. BARI

A pure work of art has no more moral purpose than a Gothic structure, a piece of painting, or a symphony of the highest order. All these have an appeal to our emotion, our aesthetic sense, without making us either virtuous or vicious. By making the sermons more musical we either take away the sermonising effect, or make a caricature of the music. Same thing happens when imagism and symbolism are used in painting. It is only in the domain of literature that morality often has a place. But all the same, the moral life of a man forms only part of the subject matter of the artist; though the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

Ever since the beginning, the art of language had been utilized for the purpose of spreading morality. The earliest miracle and morality plays, in which a deus exmachina used to burst forth on the stage to punish the villain, and reward the virtuous, were mainly having a moral purpose. Only how many of them could actually be regarded as work of art, is really doubtful. Later on, in the hands of the school-men art was totally the hand-maid of the so-called morality that existed then.

The Renaissance, for the first time, freed art. But it is curious to observe that once art was free, it served morality more intensely and sincerely than it had ever done before. Any casual remark of any of the Shakespearean fools, is worth all the scholastic sermons of the Middle Ages.

But once again, in the hands of the ‘notoriously wise man’ like Bacon, language became didactic and fit to be studied by ‘sans eyes and sans ears’. And yet, they are works of art.

But it is surprising to find that Milton, who started his ‘Paradise Lost’ to justify the ways of God to men, hardly did anything that he claimed. This is one of the instances where the artist is swayed away by the work of art itself. The subject is there, to be sure. But the moment the painter puts one brush stroke on the canvas and then another, the two brush strokes take a relation to each other, and to the space around them. The painting immediately begins to exert its own demands upon the painter, its own way of going. Immediately the original subject thins out into smoke, and the painting carries away the artist so much that he makes a God of a Satan. The morals were put aside and forgotten.

But later still, the whole space of the 17th and 18th century poetry and prose is studded with didactic authors, which reached its climax in Pope, whose greatest moral purpose was to expose the hypocrisy and mercenary tendencies of his age.

Slow rise worth by poverty depressed.

But here more slow, where all are slaves to gold.

Where looks are merchandise and smiles are sold.

Yet, Mr. Herbert Read compares and contrasts the mind of Wordsworth and Dryden and concludes about Dryden’s poetry, that ‘Such poetry is not poetry.’ Probably he meant that it was wit writ large. Mr. Read had in mind those examples of fine arts, which are always imperfect, always defective, which could never give satisfaction to the artist. For instance, Shelley said, “My poems, will, I feel, little stand the criticism even of friendship.” That is, it is running after a mirage that he devotes his life to. And yet in the process, he dropt out fragments of superb beauty which surpass the beauty of so-called perfection, before which all perfections seem caricatures and cartoons. Precisely, that is the difference between Romanticism and Classicism. And that is why, it is so very difficult to call both of them ‘art’ in the same breath. Dryden perfected the heroic couplet, and translated virgil. Perfection and art are antithetical; and translation is no art but is something mechanical.

Naturally, the Romantic class of poets who engrossed themselves the service of ‘this’ kind of art had to follow knowledge like the sinking star; and absolutely could not afford to take the question of morals. For, Shelley says: “A poem very didactic, I think is very stupid”, wrote volumes in beautiful prose taking up all the moral questions that troubled his mind, and which easily can be taken as works of art. For instance:

“There is a tide both in public and private affairs which awaits both men and nations.” This is as much artistic as any piece of poetry. And yet, Shelley kept clean his poetry of any morals, in spite of the fact that his moral and political views are quite strong. For, he was quite conscious of the limits of ‘his’ art, and he never for a moment thought of using poetry as a medium for propaganda. It was much too sacred for him. And precisely, for the same reason, the whole lot of the Romanticists are supposed to have been suffering from a ‘dissociation of sensibility.’

On the other hand, a poet like Wordsworth who cultivated art for the sake of art, would, not only in the later days, write a poem like Laodamia, but expected that his poetry would be found to have considerable moral value, At the outset, we would not expect any moral flowing down the poetry of a man, who sets about his work by saying that, “the end of poetry is to produce excitement in coexistence with an overbalance of pleasure,” And yet, at the end he forgets this ‘end’ and wants a moral value; for lines like these:

The Gods approve

The depth, not the tumult of the soul

cannot be overlooked. “It goes irresistibly home, both morally and artistically.” Mr. Abercrombie argues that the morality of a poem cannot invalidate the purely aesthetic judgment of it, the experience of it as something good in itself without having to appeal to any ulterior criterion.” In general Mr. Abercrombie is right when he further says: “If a poet choses to formulate, we can at least say that he puts himself on a level with any other professional moralist. As an artist, he gives us what only he can give: as a moralist, he is no better off than we are. His words can command our imagination. They cannot command our moral sense.” That means, even when we reject his morals the impact of the aesthetic qualities has impressed us for good.

Coming to the modern era, the question of morality is uppermost in the minds of writers, and critics, and poets, though the greatest moral now seems to he to rend the ‘air’ of all accepted morals, as Mr. G. B. S. puts it, “Cowardice is universal; patriotism, religion, morality, discipline, public opinion are only fine names for intimidation: and cruelty, gluttony and credulity keep cowardice in countenance. The only novelty is our method. This inimitable art is full of didacticism, this is almost the revival of 18th century as well. The extent of morality is now not only satisfied with a handful of labelled virtues and vices, but it has extended to meet the diverse corners of modern life. Similarly, art now covers the entire cosmos and there is no limit to artistic creation. Literature which had been all along a reflection of life, is all the more so now. The wounds and ulcers of humanity are thoroughly exposed in order that they would get diagnosed and treated. The whole bulk of communistic literature gives a microscopic account of the evils of society. The novels of Zola and Moravia are challenges to the Doctors of Divinity. And since indirect suggestion is more effective than direct suggestion, almost any modern novel can be said to have a moral lesson for the readers, save the yellow journalism. Oscar Wilde says: “There is no such thing called a moral or an immoral book. Books are well-written or badly written, thats all!” What he meant by that is, that, it is not the moral purpose that makes a novel a public favourite; it is the artistic part of it that makes it a hot-cake. The peril is the sickness that a modern man gets into after going through any of the modern books–novels, stories and poems. For, in no other time poetry was a better ‘criticism of life’ than at present–in the Waste Land, Gerontion, or the Hollowman, for that matter. The question is, how much of it actually affects the sensibility of even the enlightened reader. Whether he actually recognises the greatness of Eliot in lines like these:

When the evening is spread out against the sky,

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

or by his didacticism preached in his bigger poems. Similarly we can bring back another poet from the past–Herrik, for instance. He is out and out a didactic poet and is towered over by greater poets before and after him. And yet, whenever there is a discussion on poetry, how is it that we are reminded

When as in silk my Julia goes,

Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows

The liquefaction of her clothes.

That is because, there is no moral here–it’s pure art and of the highest kind.

The conclusion that we reach is not quite a happy one, because it is a sentence from a man who said: “But for arts sake alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence.” Certainly G.B.S. would have effaced that sentence had he known, it would in such a context. And that is, “The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong, the moment your conscious self meddles with it.” So, the artist is great or small to the extent of the absence of shackles on his sensibility–self-imposed or otherwise.

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