Charles Batteux: The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle 2015932610

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The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle

The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle

Charles Batteux

T R A N S L A T E D W IT H A N IN T R O D U C T IO N AN D N O TES B Y

James O. Young

OXFORD U N IV ER SITY PRESS

OXJFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, 0 X 2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department o f the University o f Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark o f Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © James O. Young 2015 The moral rights o f the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2015 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part o f this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope o f the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States o f America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States o f America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2015932610 ISBN 9 7 8 -0 -1 9 -8 7 4 7 1 1 -6 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4ΥΎ Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work

For Donald and Marjorie Bowman

Ex notofictum carmen sequar. — Horace

Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate, That few, but those who cannot write, translate. — Sir John Denham

Contents Acknowledgements Translator’s Introduction Epistle Dedicatory Preface

xiii xv lxxv lxxvii

Part One: Where we establish the nature of the arts by reference to the genius that produced them Chapter One Chapter Two

Division and origin of the arts Genius is only able to produce the arts by imitation; what imitation is

Chapter Three Genius must not imitate reality just as it is

3

5 11

Chapter Four

The state genius must be in to imitate belle nature

15

Chapter Five

On the manner in which the arts imitate

19

Chapter Six

Why eloquence and architecture differ from the other arts

22

Part Two: Where we establish the principle of imitation by reference to nature and the laws of taste Chapter One

W hat taste is

29

Chapter Two

The subject of taste can only be nature

32

Chapter Three Evidence drawn from the history of taste Chapter Four

The purpose of the laws of taste is to imitate belle nature

Chapter Five

Second general law of taste: Belle nature must be imitated well

Chapter Six

There are particular rules for each artwork and taste finds them only in nature

35 39

45

49

X

CONTENTS

Chapter Seven Conclusion I: There is only one general type of good taste, but several particular types Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

51

Conclusion II: Since the arts are imitators of nature, they must be judged by comparison to it

54

Conclusion III: Taste for nature and a taste for the arts being the same, there is only one taste that applies to everything, even to manners

58

Conclusion IV: How it is important to form taste in a timely manner and how we should go about forming it

61

Part Three: Where the principle of imitation is verified by its application to the various arts Section One: Poetical art consists in the imitation of belle nature Chapter One

Chapter Two

Where opinions contrary to the principle of imitation are refuted

69

The divisions of poetry are found in [types of] imitation

74

Chapter Three The general rules of poetical content are contained in the principle of imitation Chapter Four

Chapter Five

The rules of poetical style are contained in the imitation of belle nature All rules of epic poetry come from the principle of imitation

76

84 98

Chapter Six

On tragedy

106

Chapter Seven

On comedy

110

Chapter Eight

On pastoralpoetry

113

Chapter Nine

On fables

115

Chapter Ten

On lyric poetry

119

Section Two: On painting Section Three: On music and dance Chapter One

Gestures and tones of voice are the keys to understanding music and dance

129

CONTENTS XI Chapter Two

The emotions are the principal subject of music and dance

132

Chapter Three All music and dance must have a referent and a meaning

135

Chapter Four

The expressive qualities that music and dance must have

139

Chapter Five

On the union of the fine arts

144

Index

149

Acknowledgements I could not have successfully undertaken to translate, introduce, and annotate Batteux s book without the aid of many people. At the risk of missing some of them, I will attempt to name them all. For a start, I must thank m y father-in-law, the Honourable Donald G.H. Bowman, QC, for his invaluable assistance. His knowledge o f French is better than m y own. Originally, I conceived of this project as a joint one and I thought that he would be named co-translator. I only undertook the translation on the understanding that I would have Mr. B.’s assistance. In the event, I was able to make better progress on m y own than I had anticipated and M r. B. generously suggested that I be named as the sole translator. While m y name is the only one on the title page, it must be understood that my debt to Mr. B. is enormous. W e read through large parts of the text together and he read several drafts of the translation, checking it against the original. I am also indebted to m y mother-in-law, Marjorie Bowman. Her French, like her husband’s, is excellent, and together they read the original and the draft translation. Mrs. B. is responsible for m any improvements to the text. Next I must thank colleagues at the University o f Victoria. Two of m y colleagues in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies translated most of the passages in ancient languages. Cedric Littlewood translated most of the Latin and Laurel Bowman translated most of the Greek. (Laurel, not coincidentally, is my wife.) Lauren Mayes assisted with the translation of some of the Greek and Laurel helped with some of the Latin. (I puzzled out a few short passages of Latin and in some cases appropriated from out-of-copyright texts.) Claire Carlin of the Depart­ ment of French was an invaluable advisor at several points. An authority on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature, she was able to provide expert assistance. She was particularly helpful in the transla­ tion of French verse. W henever the translation o f a passage o f French verse has any elegance, she is likely responsible for it. (Sometimes I appropriated old translations of French verse rather than make new ones, or ask Claire to assist m e with the translation.)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

M argaret Cameron and Audrey Yap, colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, helped m e to understand several difficult passages. Margaret and I read through m uch of the text and translation. M argaret also gave m e the benefit of her profound knowledge o f the history of philosophy. I drew extensively on her expertise while writing the Introduction. Andrew Park, an M .A. candidate in the Department of Philosophy, checked all of the Latin and Greek quotations against the originals. Finally, Anaïs Lenoir, M.A., a native speaker of French, read through the translation and checked it against the original. I am grateful for the comments of the two readers to whom Oxford University Press sent the manuscript of this volume. One of these readers was anonymous, but at a recent meeting o f the American Society for Aesthetics, Paul Guyer told me that he was the other reader. I was delighted to learn that such a distinguished authority on the history of aesthetics had recommended this book for publication. I would also like to thank Dr. Eleanor Collins, a philosophy editor at the Press, for her assistance with this project. Any errors that rem ain are m y responsibility. W hen I say that I alone am responsible for any remaining errors, this is not a mere m atter of form. At several points I chose to follow m y own philosophical and philological inclinations rather than accept the advice o f people who are, arguably, much better qualified than I am. Victoria, British Columbia, 2015

Translator’s Introduction Why read Batteux? The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle is an im portant book for several reasons. For a start, it is a book of considerable art historical interest. It provides us with a window on how artworks were experienced and interpreted in the eighteenth century. Such a widely read and influential work is invaluable in understanding the art of the time. ( The Fine Arts has been called “a good summary o f eighteenth century thinking on the arts.”1) Perhaps even m ore importantly, it lies at the centre of the debate concerning the ‘m odern system of the arts.’ It is widely accepted that poetry, painting, dance, sculpture, and music do not obviously belong under the same rubric and yet we speak o f them as the ‘fine arts.’ Batteux’s book has an important place in the standard narra­ tive about how the fine arts became the fine arts. Even more im portantly still, The Fine Arts has enduring philosophical interest. Batteux antici­ pates several currently debated views in the philosophy of art. W e can still learn from this book. In this Introduction, I will begin by giving a few biographical details about Batteux before going on to sketch the principal conclusions that he reaches in the course of his book. N ext Batteux will be placed in his historical context, by identifying the writers who influenced him and then the writers who were, in turn, influenced by him or who reacted against him. I will then highlight one element of The Fine Arts that casts light on eighteenth-century thinking about the arts: Batteux’s contribu­ tion to the debate about the relative merits of ancient and modern writers. Next, I will focus on two aspects of The Fine Arts that bear upon ongoing philosophical debates: his conviction that art can be an important source o f knowledge (including moral knowledge) and his views on the expressiveness of music. I will then proceed to a re­ examination of the standard account o f how Batteux contributed to the

1 R.G. Saisselin, Taste in Eighteenth Century France: Critical Reflections on the Origins o f Aesthetics or an Apology fo r Amateurs (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1965), P -4 .

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formation o f the m odern system o f the arts. This Introduction concludes with a note on the text and this translation, and some suggestions for further reading.

Batteux: the man To put Batteux’s work in some context, I will provide here a brief outline o f his life. Batteux’s biography has been sketched elsewhere for those who would like further details.2 For those who would like a few m ore details about his life, Batteux wrote a short autobiography.3 No biography of the m an makes for gripping reading. He led a quiet and uneventful life. Batteux was born on 6 May 1713 in Allend’hui, a small town in northern France, not far from Sedan. His father, who died in 1735, seems to have enjoyed a comfortable income. At first Batteux was educated at home by a half-brother 25 years older than himself. He then entered a school connected to the University o f Reims, where he did very well. After he completed his schooling, the question o f a career arose. Batteux, by his own account, adored his m other and she had a huge influence on him. She had had a brother in the priesthood and she encouraged her son to take holy orders. Accordingly, he entered a seminary in Reims. In the seminary, one o f his teachers, Louis du Vau, gave him a complete edition of Cicero, a collected Hom er, and the Bible in Hebrew. This seems to have cemented his interests in literature and other arts. He also cam e under the influence of the ‘Socrates o f Reims,’ Louis-Jean Lévesque de Pouilly, who encouraged Batteux’s studies of literature, aesthetics, and rhetoric. “Pen in hand,” Batteux wrote, he “compared the Greek, Latin, and French authors.” These studies became the foundation of The Fine Arts. H e was ordained and became, at age 22, Professor o f Rhetoric at the University of Reims. Batteux was not particularly happy in Reims. He did not enjoy being the teacher of students only a litder younger than he was. In 1743, the brother o f his m entor (Jean Lévêsque de Burigny) wrote a letter o f reference to Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d’Olivet, an influential scholar, on

2 Cecile Nebel, ‘Charles Batteux,’ Writers o f the French Enlightenment, ed. Samia I. Spencer (Detroit, M.I.: Gale, 2005), vol. 1 ,1 8 -2 4 . 3 ‘Vie de l’Abbé Batteux, ou lettre écrite par lui-même à ses neveux,’ in Allais, Principes de Littérature, 9-26.

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xvii

behalf of Batteux. Batteux showed d’Olivet a draft o f The Fine Arts and the older m an helped him secure a Chair of Rhetoric at Collège de Lisieux. W ith the assistance o f d’Olivet, Batteux moved to the Collège de Navarre, one o f the most prestigious in France. Soon after, in 1746, Batteux published two books. The first was Parallèle de la Henriade et du Lutrin in which Batteux unfavourably compared Voltaire’s Henriade to Boileau’s Lutrin. The second was The Fine Arts. This book secured for Batteux a Europe-wide reputation. In 1750 Batteux was appointed to the Chair o f Greek and Roman Philosophy at the Collège de France, then, as now, one o f the m ost prestigious institutions in France. He owed his chair, in part, to the support of such powerful figures as François Quesnay, M arc-Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy d’Argenson, and François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif. Batteux was admitted to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1754 and the Académie français in 1761. Batteux spent m ost of the rest of his life as an academic. He published an expanded version o f The Fine Arts (Cours de belles-lettres distribué p ar

exercises (1 7 4 8 -4 9 )). (I have translated the original version o f The Fine Arts. The parts that Batteux expanded are precisely those of least interest to modern readers.) Batteux published a book on the moral philosophy o f Epicurus in 1758, a treatise on translation, a book on first causes in ancient and modern philosophy in 1769, and several other works. Finally, he produced a 45-volume Cours d ’études à l’usage des élèves de

l’école militaire. None of these later works is much read today, though some of his works were regularly reprinted until late in the nineteenth century. In his 40s, Batteux found himself unhappy with academia. By Batteux’s account, French academia of the time was riven with strife and petty intrigue. (Plus ça change.) He suffered, in his own words, from an

“affection mélancolique” and decided to attach himself to a great lord. He entered the service of the Dauphin (Crown Prince) of France, but quit his post after six weeks. (Batteux had earlier dedicated The Fine Arts to this prince.) The intrigues at court were m uch worse than anything he had experienced in academia. He spent the rest of his life ensconced in the academy. He died on 14 July 1780 and was buried in the Church of SaintAndré-des-Arts. This church was demolished in 1815. Diderot mentions Batteux in Ram eau’s Nephew. There the title char­ acter remarks in passing that, “W e sometimes have the company of the

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peasant Abbé d’Olivet, the fat Abbé Le Blanc,4 and the hypocrite Bat­ teux.”5 It is unclear why Batteux is described as a hypocrite, but Diderot seems to have coveted Batteux’s Chair of Greek and Roman Philosophy at the Collège de France. (According to one contemporary, Diderot even had a prepared course o f lectures on ancient philosophy.) Perhaps Diderot believed that Batteux was a hypocrite because, though he owed (at least in part) his academic posts and appointment to the Académie français to d’Olivet, a leader o f the religious conservatives, Batteux seems not to have been deeply committed to the conservative faction. O r perhaps we should n ot read too much into this passing reference in a work o f fiction. Other evidence suggests that Batteux was a pleasant man. He is reported to have annually given 500 livres to the curé of Saint-André-des-Arts. (In the eighteenth century, a livre was worth about 1 shilling, 6 pence.) Since he was patronized by d’Olivet, many o f d’Olivet’s enemies became Batteux’s enemies. Nevertheless, Batteux seems to have had friends of all stripes. A contemporary described him as, “Grave without austerity, rather by his station in life than by character. In company, he displayed a pleasant gaiety and a philosophy without bitterness, without partisanship.”6 This comes across in his writings where he expresses his views undogmatically. I hope that this translation captures something o f the man as well as accurately representing his thought.

The principal doctrines of The Fine Arts Today, Batteux’s book is mainly remembered as the one in which the system of the fine arts received its final form. (I will, below, argue that this is not a completely accurate description of the book.) That is, The Fine Arts is remembered as the book in which poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and dance were authoritatively grouped together as the fine arts. It is, however, not a one-idea book. It is a wide-ranging volume and Batteux has interesting comments to make on a variety of topics in philosophy of art and art criticism. In this section, I will sketch out the

4 Jean-Bernard Le Blanc (1 7 0 1 -8 1 ), a French art critic. 5 Denis Diderot, Oeuvres Philosophiques (Brussels: Librairie Philosophique, 1829), vol. 6, p. 87. 6 Allais, ‘Notice historique,5 Principes de Littérature, p. 27.

translator ’ s introduction

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main conclusions of the book. Later, I will discuss in more detail some o f Batteux’s m ore important contributions to philosophy of art. The fine arts, Batteux believed, are a subset of the arts in general. His first task is to give a taxonom y of the arts and to distinguish the fine arts from the others. Batteux never gives a definition of the arts in general. He simply tells us that, “The arts have built cities, gathered together dis­ persed people, and refined and polished their manners, fitting them for social life.” (3) As Batteux understands the arts, they include agriculture, politics, carpentry, and so on as well as what he calls the fine arts. He divides the arts into three categories on the basis o f the ends towards which they are directed. The first he calls the mechanical arts. These arts have the goal of serving our practical needs. Though Batteux does not use this example, presumably agriculture counts as a m ech­ anical art. Metallurgy would be another. His second category is that o f the fine arts. The goal of the fine arts, he says, is to provide pleasure. The fine arts are poetry (by which he means literature), painting, sculpture, music, and dance (which he understands to include acting). Batteux identifies a third category of arts. These arts have the goals o f providing for our practical needs and providing pleasure. Architecture and eloquence are the two arts he identifies as belonging to this category. Architecture serves the practical goal o f protecting us from the elements, but experience of a building can also be a source o f pleasure. As the title of the book suggests, Batteux reduces the fine arts to a single principle. That is, he believes that all o f the fine arts share a com m on essential feature. Given his starting point, it might be thought that the com m on feature is that they provide pleasure without utility. In fact, according to Batteux, what the fine arts have in com m on is that they imitate: the fine arts are essentially imitative arts. There are, however, other imitative arts. History is one. Batteux needs a way to distinguish the fine arts from other imitative arts. H e distinguishes the fine arts from other imitative arts by reference to what is imitated. The fine arts do not imitate ordinary reality. Rather, they imitate belle

nature. Belle nature is one of Batteux’s central concepts and it is important to grasp what he means by it. The literal translation of ‘belle nature’ is ‘beautiful nature.’ This translation does not, however, comfortably cap­ ture Batteux’s meaning. Francis Coleman proposed that ‘belle nature’ be

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translated as ‘ideal nature.’7 1 considered this solution, but rejected it for two reasons. The first is that it is not idiomatic English. Belle nature at least has the advantage of being good French. The second reason is that talk of ideal nature is a little misleading. A n artist can represent some­ thing that is far from ideal and be imitating belle nature in Batteux’s sense. In the end, I decided to leave the phrase untranslated and intro­ duce belle nature as a term of art. Sometimes ‘ideal nature’ would be a reasonable translation of belle nature. Consider, for example, the passage where Batteux writes that belle nature is not the reality that is; rather it is the reality that could be, the truly beautiful, which is represented as if it actually existed, with all of the perfections which it could have. (13) He gives an example o f belle nature by recounting the story of the celebrated ancient Greek painter, Zeuxis: What did Zeuxis do when he wanted to depict perfect beauty? Did he make the portrait of some particular beautiful woman, whose portrait was drawn from life? [No,] he collected the various features of several living beautiful women. He then formed in his mind a fabricated idea that resulted from the combination of these features. (12) In this passage, belle nature seems very much to be beautiful and ideal nature. Sometimes, however, Batteux illustrates the concept of belle nature with examples that are far from examples of something beautiful or idealized. For example, he writes that, When Molière wanted to represent misanthropy [in The Misanthrope], he did not search Paris for an exemplar of which his play was an exact copy. This would only have been a history or a portrait. Half of his point would have been lost. Instead, he collected all of the characteristics of a bleak disposition that he was able to find in people and combined them with all the characteristics of the same type that his imagination could produce. (12) So when Batteux speaks of belle nature he is not, or not always, speaking o f ideal beauty. Rather, belle nature refers to archetypes or models

7 Francis X.J. Coleman, The Aesthetic Thought o f the French Enlightenment (Pittsburgh, P.A.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), p. 62.

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created by the artist. Batteux makes clear that the artist must draw on nature in creating these types, but they are the creation of the artist. These types may be ideal types (that is, something ideally beautiful or good) but they need not be. In representing belle nature the artist must make a selection from objects and properties found in nature. In this respect, Batteux differs significantly from his predecessors such as Jean-Baptiste Dubos. Dubos believed that artists need only imitate what they find in nature. He wrote that, “characters, if well drawn, would never be tiresome, because they exist in nature; and a plain and ingenuous description o f nature is always agreeable.”8 Although Batteux takes pleasure to be the exclusive goal o f the fine arts, his considered opinion is that these arts are important sources o f knowledge. In particular, we can, according to Batteux, acquire moral knowledge from the fine arts when it imitates belle nature. That is, Batteux was an early advocate of aesthetic cognitivism. This is a point to which I will return. To imitate belle nature , Batteux believed, artists m ust be in a state o f ‘enthusiasm.’ By this he means that artists must enter into an emotional state akin to that o f the persons they represent. Batteux writes that artists must forget their situation, take leave of themselves, and put themselves in the midst of things that they want to represent. If they want to paint a battle, they transport themselves, as does the poet, into the midst of the mêlée. They hear the din of arms and the cries of the dying. They see the fury, the carnage, and the blood. They excite their own imaginations until they feel moved, gripped, and frightened. Then - deus ecce deus - this is what they sing, this is what they paint. (12)

In this way Batteux adopts a version o f what is sometimes called an expression theory of art. Artists, on this view, express in their works emotional states they are in at the time they create the works. Batteux gives the expression theory o f art his own twist. Artists, when they create artworks, are not in the emotional state they represent, but in a sort of simulacrum of the emotion. He distinguishes the emotional state o f artists from that of prophets such as David. David, in writing the Psalms,

8 Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting and Music, trans. Thomas Nugent (London: John Nourse, 1748), vol. 1, p. 193.

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truly was in the grip o f a passion. The artist is in a state that emulates that o f a person in the grip o f a given passion. Batteux had a Platonist account of artistic inspiration. The old debate between Platonists and Longinians was still a live one in the eighteenth century. Platonism, which can be traced to Plato’s Ion, is the view that the artist is divinely inspired. On this view, the artist is a sort o f conduit through which the divine speaks. The divine inspires enthusiasm in the artist. (The view contrary to Platonism originated in On the Sublime (c. 100 AD ), a work conventionally attributed to Longinus, though the author’s real name is unknown. Longinians believed that the great artist is endowed by nature with great powers, which he wields without assistance.) Platonism about artistic inspiration was widespread in the eighteenth century (Edward Young and Herder were two o f the posi­ tion’s adherents) and, with the rise of Romanticism, it became even more comm on. Part Two of The Fine Arts is devoted to taste. Having characterized art as the imitation o f belle nature, Batteux also establishes a standard by which works of art can be judged. The good works o f art are the ones that are good imitations o f belle nature. W e are able to tell that works of art are good imitations because we are all endowed, to a greater or lesser extent, with taste, the “sense that informs us whether belle nature has been well or poorly imitated.” (31) Batteux is opposed to subjectivism and the view that there is no disputing concerning taste. Batteux clearly believes that some people have better taste than others. He states unequivocally that, “There is good taste.” He goes on to say that, It is apparent that tastes cannot be different without ceasing to be good, except when their objects are different. If they have the same object, and one approves and the other condemns it, then one of the two will be bad. If one approves of the object up to a certain degree, and the other goes beyond or falls short of that degree, then one of the two will be less pure, less comprehensive, and less delicate and will be, consequently, bad, at least by comparison with the other which is at the perfect point. (29)

Consequently, when two people disagree about the aesthetic value of some artwork, one is right and the other is wrong. If art is only a source of pleasure, it is difficult to see how Batteux can defend this position. Suppose that I am pleased by some work and you are not. Consequently, I judge that the work is valuable and you judge

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that it is not. It is difficult to see what basis I can have for saying that your judgement about the work is mistaken. You cannot be mistaken about how much pleasure some work of art gives you. Subjectivism seems unavoidable. In holding that art can be a source o f knowledge, however, Batteux has put himself in a position to reject subjectivism. There is a fact of the m atter about whether some work of art is a source o f knowledge about nature or promotes virtue. I m ay judge that a work o f art is poor, but if it is a source of insight into virtue (or otherwise a source o f knowledge) and valuable as such, then I have m ade a mistake. Good taste in the arts is, Batteux believes, closely related to moral judgement: “Love of o rd e r. . . is called ‘taste’ when it is applied to things that please and ‘virtue’ when it is concerned with conduct.” (61) Although Batteux believes that we are naturally endowed with taste, he also believes that it can be cultivated. In this context, Batteux interestingly anticipates some of the ideas on education expounded by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Emile (1762). Batteux does not give a detailed philosophy of education, but he believes, like Rousseau, that education is a m atter of allowing a child’s natural capacities to develop. Children, Batteux believed, should never be forced against their natural inclinations. As we will see below, Rousseau certainly read The Fine

Arts and likely his thoughts on education were influenced by Batteux’s work. Part Three of The Fine Arts is devoted to showing how the general view that the fine arts are imitative is confirmed when we examine each particular art. Batteux’s particular area o f expertise was poetry and he has a great deal of interest to say about poetry in all o f its various genres. At times, the book becomes an example o f an older genre o f writing: it is a sort of manual for writing and evaluating poetry in various genres. In the context of his discussion o f poetry, Batteux wades into the debate (which raged in the early eighteenth century) about the relative merits o f ancient and modern writers. I will return to this m atter below. Batteux gave the arts other than poetry comparatively short shrift. He scarcely mentioned sculpture and he devoted only two pages to painting, an art about which he seems to have known little. (Raphael, Rubens, and Le Brun are the only modern painters mentioned in the course of the book.) Batteux has more to say about music, m uch o f it of considerable interest. I will address Batteux’s thoughts on music in m ore detail below.

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Influences on Batteux There were two principal influences on Batteux’s thought. The first was the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Batteux was particularly influenced by Plato, Horace, and Aristotle, but he was well versed in all of the principal ancient writers. The second was a French school o f literary theory that flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In arguing that the essence o f the fine arts is imitation, Batteux saw himself as re-articulating a view that the ancients had held. Aristotle and Horace were huge influences on him, and Batteux also cites Plato’s

Republic in support o f his position. In The Fine Arts, Batteux writes that his position is not novel. It was ubiquitous in the ancient world. Aristotle began the

Poetics by stating the principle that music, dance, poetry, and painting are imitative arts. (8) The influence of Aristotle is manifest in Batteux. It seems very likely that his initial distinction between the mechanical arts and the fine arts originated in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. There we find the distinction between arts relating to “necessities” and arts relating to “the pastimes o f life.”9 This is closely parallel to Batteux’s distinction between the mechanical arts and the arts whose goal is pleasure. Batteux regards the latter as the fine arts and Ross, in his classic com m entary on the

Metaphysics, glosses Aristotle’s second category as “almost=fine arts.”10 Batteux was influenced by a passage in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, where he refers to “painting, poetry, [and] sculpture” as sources o f imitations. This passage anticipates Batteux in two ways. F o r a start, the com m on factor linking painting, poetry, and sculpture, on Aristotle’s view, is that they imitate. Batteux similarly held that imitation is the essence (or ‘single principle’) o f the arts. Also, Aristotle’s list in the Rhetoric includes threefifths of Batteux’s list o f fine arts: “music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and the art of gesture, o r dance.” (3) The overlap between the two lists is expanded when we recall that, in the Poetics, Aristotle writes that, “Epic p oetry. . . and the poetry o f tragic drama, and, moreover, comedy

9 Metaphysics, 1.981b. (All translations of ancient texts are from the Perseus Digital Library.) 10 W.D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), vol. 1, p. 118.

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INTRODUCTION XXV

and dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and harp-playing, these, speaking generally, may all be said to be ‘representations of life’.”11 In the same section of the Poetics, Aristotle writes that, “Rhythm alone without tune is employed by dancers in their representations, for by means o f rhythmical gestures they represent both character and experiences and actions.” That is, Aristotle seems to group music and dance together with poetry, painting, and sculpture. This is Batteux’s full list of fine arts. Batteux’s concept of belle nature has its roots in Aristotle. In the Poetics, Aristotle held that poetry is m ore philosophical than history. History deals with particulars but poetry with the general (that is, with types).12 Batteux seized on this passage o f the Poetics and developed the view that art imitates not real particulars (which is what history does) but rather prototypes or models that stand (like Aristotle’s types) for classes o f particulars. Horace’s Art o f Poetry was a major influence on Batteux’s Fine Arts. The Art o f Poetry and other works by Horace are repeatedly quoted throughout Batteux’s book. It is literally quoted from beginning to end: we find references to The Art o f Poetry in Batteux’s Preface and in the very last line of the book. Like Aristotle, Horace believed that the arts are essentially imitative. This concept was expressed in his slogan: ut pictura poesis.13 That is, ‘As in painting, so is poetry.’ Just as painting imitates, so does poetry. Just as importantly, H orace was a source for Batteux’s aesthetic cognitivism. In The Art o f Poetry (lines 3 3 3 -4 ), Horace wrote that, Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae, Aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae.

In a well-known translation, Francis Howes rendered these lines thus: To teach—to please—comprise the poet’s views, Or else at once to profit and amuse.14

Batteux took this to heart. Poetry, and the fine arts more generally, are not merely a source of pleasure. They are also an important source of instruction, including moral instruction.

11 Poetics, 1447a. 12 Poetics, 1451b. 13 Horace, A rt of Poetry, 361. 14 The Epodes, Satires, and Epistles o f Horace, trans. Francis Howes (London: William Pickering, 1845), p. 238.

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Leaving aside his knowledge o f the ancients, the author of The Fine Arts was a fairly parochial writer. French authors seem to have been almost the only modern writers who influenced the views that Batteux expressed in his book. The m odem authors with whom Batteux was familiar belonged primarily to a tradition o f French literary criticism. M ost of these writers are now alm ost entirely forgotten. In the course of the book he mentions or cites François Hedelin, Abbé d’Aubignac (1 6 0 4 -7 6 ), author o f La Pratique du théâtre (1657), Pierre Nicole (1 6 2 5 -9 5 ), Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1 6 3 6 -1 7 1 1 ), Jean de La Bruyère (1 6 4 5 -9 6 ), Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1 6 5 4 -1 7 2 0 ), Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1 6 5 7 -1 7 5 7 ), Charles Rollin (1 6 6 1 -1 7 4 1 ), René Le Bossu (1 6 3 1 -8 0 ), author o f Traité du poèm e épique (1675), Jean Régnault de Segrais (1 6 3 4 -1 7 0 1 ), René Rapin (1 6 2 1 -8 7 ), Pierre-Joseph Thoulier d’Olivet (1 6 8 2 -1 7 6 8 ), Toussaint Rémond de Saint-Mard (1 6 8 2 -1 7 5 7 ), author of Réflexions sur la poésie (1734), and Jean V atry (1 6 9 7 -1 7 6 9 ). In the section o f The Fine Arts devoted to music, Batteux makes reference to works by Descartes, Marin Mersenne (1 5 8 8 -1 6 4 8 ), Joseph Sauveur (1 6 5 3 -1 7 1 6 ), and the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. Gerardus Vossius (15 7 7 -1 6 4 9 ), a Dutch classicist, rhetorician, and theologian, the Italian poet Girolamo Vida (c. 148 5 -1 5 6 6 ), and the English philosopher Francis Bacon are the only non-French modern authorities cited by Batteux. (Perhaps not coincidentally, these non-French authors wrote in Latin, a language that Batteux read.) A t the time that he wrote The Fine Arts, Batteux seems to have had a limited knowledge o f modern developments in philosophy o f art. He m ay have been familiar with Jean-Baptiste Dubos’ Réflexions critiques sur

la poésie et sur la peinture (1719), which was probably the most im port­ ant eighteenth-century French work on aesthetics prior to The Fine Arts. Dubos is not mentioned anywhere in The Fine Arts, but some passages are reminiscent of Batteux’s views. Batteux seems to have been unaware of the writings of English philo­ sophers of art. After the publication of The Fine Arts, Batteux apparently became acquainted with the work of at least one English writer. The

Nouvelle Edition of The Fine Arts, published in Leiden (1753), contains ‘deuxpetits Traités’ translated from the English: LArt. Dialogue addressé a mylord Shaftsbury [sic] and Discours sur la musique, la peinture et la poésie. These little treatises were anonymously printed, but on examin­ ation they prove to be the first two of James Harris’ Three Treatises

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(1744). There is no way to know whether Batteux translated these treatises, or even whether he could read English. (The ability to read English was not widespread in eighteenth-century France.) Presumably, however, one way or another Batteux became acquainted with the work o f Harris after the publication of the Nouvelle Edition. And he had, at least, heard of Shaftesbury by then. There is, however, no indication that Batteux was acquainted with either Harris or Shaftesbury at the time that he wrote The Fine Arts. There are hints in The Fine Arts that Batteux was acquainted, directly or indirectly, with the work o f Francis Hutcheson and, in particular, his

Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design (1725). H utch­ eson had two characteristic doctrines that are echoed in Batteux’s work. The first is the view that the objects that “excite in us the ideas of Beauty, seem to be those in which there is Uniformity amidst Variety.” The second doctrine is that we have a particular sense, namely a “Sense o f Beauty,”15 that is responsible for the apprehension o f beauty. That is, we have, as part of our natural endowment, a sense o f beauty that detects uniformity amidst variety. At a number o f places in The Fine Arts we find passages reminiscent o f both of Hutcheson’s doctrines. For example, Batteux writes that, Unity and variety produce symmetry and proportion, two qualities that presup­ pose a distinction and difference between the parts and, at the same time, an affinity between them. Symmetry divides, so to speak, the object in two, placing the unique parts in the middle and those that are repeated on the sides. This forms a sort of balance and equilibrium that gives order, freedom, and grace to an object. Proportion goes farther. It goes into the details of the parts and compares them with each other and with the whole. The parts are seen from the point of view of unity, diversity, and the pleasing combination of these two qualities with each other. (42-3)

In other passages, Batteux describes taste as a “sense” and, elsewhere, as a “natural capacity.” (39) W h at he does not do is suggest that we have a natural sense that detects uniformity amidst variety. On the contrary, he writes that taste “is a sense that informs us whether belle nature has been well or poorly imitated.” (31) On the basis of these passages, I cannot say with confidence that Batteux was familiar with Hutcheson’s writings.

15 Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design (1725), Section II, paragraphs 1 and 3.

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I suspect, however, that Hutcheson may have exerted some indirect influence on Batteux. Perhaps Batteux read, or discussed with his col­ leagues, views that can ultimately be traced to Hutcheson.

Batteux’s influence on eighteenth-century philosophy of art W hile modern philosophy of art had a limited impact on Batteux’s thinking in The Fine Arts, he had a m ajor impact on subsequent eighteenth-century philosophy o f art. The Fine Arts (or the expanded version o f the book, Cours de belles-lettres) was translated (in whole or in part) into English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Danish. M any of the century’s m ost im portant philosophers of art were influenced by, or reacted against, Batteux.

The Fine Arts had an immediate impact in France. Rousseau was among the philosophers influenced by Batteux. He wrote that Batteux demonstrated that, "all the fine arts have the principle of imitation in com m on.”16 Batteux also had an impact on the Encyclopédie ou Diction­

naire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1752), edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert. The article ‘A rt’ distinguishes between the mechanical and ‘liberal’ arts.17 (The term beaux arts had not yet caught on.) In the Système figuré des connaissances humaines of the Encyclopédie, poetry, painting, music, and sculpture are grouped together. The list o f fine arts was not quite Batteux’s. Diderot and d’Alembert added engraving to Batteux’s list and omitted dance. Still, it is likely that Batteux had some influence on the categorization of the arts in the Encyclopédie. Also, some articles in the Encyclopédie draw upon

The Fine Arts. The Encyclopédie article on ‘Good,’ by Claude Yvon, plagiarizes from Part Two, Chapter Five o f The Fine Arts. (In footnotes to the translation, I indicate the passages that are extracted from

16 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, Music and Aesthetics in the Eight­ eenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries, Peter le Huray and James Day, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 109. 17 Denis Diderot, ‘Art,’ The Encyclopedia o f Diderot & d ’A lembert Collaborative Trans­ lation Project. Translated by Nelly S. Hoyt and Thomas Cassirer. Ann Arbor, M.I.: MPublishing, University o f Michigan Library, 2003. Accessed 2 February 2014. . Trans, o f ‘Art,’ Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 1. Paris, 1751.

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Batteux’s work.) The Encyclopédie article on ‘Style,’ by Louis de Jaucourt, borrows from Part Three, Chapter Four of The Fine Arts. Unlike Yvon, Jaucourt acknowledged that he was drawing on Batteux’s book.18 Jau­ court also borrowed, with acknowledgement, from The Fine Arts, in the article on Lyric Poetry.19 (Batteux is also cited in the Encyclopédie article on translation.) David Funt, in his monograph on Diderot’s aesthetics, writes that, “there is no question that Diderot borrows heavily from Batteux.”20 A t the same time, as Funt notes, Diderot criticized Batteux on a number o f occasions. For a start, Diderot criticized the view that art is the imitation o f belle nature. As we have noted, Batteux is quite clear that belle nature does not actually exist. Belle nature “is n ot the reality that is; rather it is the reality that could be, the truly beautiful, which is represented as if it actually existed.” Despite this Diderot wrote that, These men who speak endlessly of the imitation of beautiful nature, believe in good faith that there is a subsistent beautiful nature, that it exists, that one sees it when one wishes, and that one need only copy it. If you were to tell them that it is a completely ideal being, they would laugh in your face.21 Some other writers may have believed that belle nature actually exists, but Batteux was not among them. Diderot had some other criticisms o f Batteux’s views concerning belle

nature. According to Diderot, Batteux was not clear about what consti­ tutes belle nature or what makes nature beautiful. In the Encyclopedia he describes The Fine Arts as a good book “missing but one m ore chapter to be excellent.” Diderot went on to say that, “Batteux does remind his

18 Louis de Jaucourt, ‘Style,’ The Encyclopedia o f Diderot & d ’A lembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon. Ann Arbor, M.I.: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library, 2006. Accessed 23 January 2014. . Originally published as ‘Style,’ Encyclopédie ou Diction­ naire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 15, Paris, 1765. 19 Louis de Jaucourt, ‘Lyric Poetry,’ The Encyclopedia o f Diderot & d ’A lembert Collab­ orative Translation Project. Translated by Helen O’Connor. Ann Arbor, M.I.: Michigan Publishing, University o f Michigan Library, 2004. Accessed 23 September 2014. . Trans, o f ‘Poésie lyrique,’ Encyclopédie ou Dic­ tionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 12, Paris, 1765. 20 David Funt, ‘Diderot and the Esthetics o f the Enlightenment,’ Diderot Studies, 11 (1968), 89. 21 Quoted in Funt, ‘Diderot and the Esthetics o f the Enlightenment,’ 8 5 -6 .

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readers of all the principles of fine Arts about the imitation o f beautiful Nature: but he fails to teach us what beautiful Nature is.”22 Similarly, in his Letter on the D eaf and Dumb, Diderot presents a second criticism of Batteux. Diderot writes that Batteux should have included, at the begin­ ning of his book, “a chapter to define in what the beauty o f nature consists.”23 W e have already seen that the first of Diderot’s complaints is without basis. Batteux is quite clear about what he means by belle nature . The second of Diderot’s criticisms m ay also be said to have missed the mark. W hile Batteux did not provide a chapter on the beauty of nature, he did address this subject. In discussing the origin of the arts, Batteux imagines that at some point an extraordinary genius emerged who “cast his eyes on nature.” W hen he did so, this genius admired this magnificent system with its infinite variety, the fitting connections of means with the end, of parts with the whole, and of causes with effects. He felt that nature was essentially simple, but without monotony; richly adorned, but without affectation; regular in its processes, abundant in its resources, but without encumbering itself with planning and rules. (36)

Elsewhere Batteux speaks of the unity, variety, and proportion found in nature. Batteux also suggests that nature is essentially good (a position we would expect a Christian to adopt) and that this goodness is a source of its beauty. While this may not have been enough to satisfy Diderot, it was perhaps unreasonable to expect Batteux to give an account of the beauty of nature in a book on the fine arts. Batteux did, however, make a brief response to Diderot. Two paragraphs are added at the end of Part Two, Chapter Four o f the 1753 edition of The Fine Arts. Batteux was particularly important in Germany, where the discussion o f The Fine Arts was facilitated by two translations, one by Karl Wilhelm Ramier and the other by Johann Adolf Schlegel (the father of the poet and philosopher Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel and an important

22 Denis Diderot, ‘Beautiful,’ The Encyclopedia o f Diderot & d ’A lembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Philippe Bonin. Ann Arbor, M.I.: MPublishing, Univer­ sity of Michigan Library, 2 0 06. Accessed 7 February 2014. . Trans, o f ‘Beau,’ Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 2. Paris, 1752. 23 Diderot’s Early Philosophical Works, trans. Margaret Jourdain (New York: Burt -Franklin, 1916), 2 0 8 -9 .

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figure in his own right). Lessing, Kant, Mendelssohn, and Herder were among the German philosophers of art who discussed Batteux. The question o f whether art should imitate nature was one of the central questions in eighteenth-century German aesthetics. The Berlin Academy o f the Sciences was heavily influenced by ideas issuing from France. W hen it cam e to matters aesthetic, its views were founded almost entirely on those expressed in Batteux’s Fine Arts . The Academy held that art is essentially the imitation o f nature. Several m ajor figures, including Lessing, sided with Batteux, though Batteux’s influence on Lessing seems to have waned with time.24 Kant held up Batteux (together with Lessing) as an exemplary art critic.25 Moreover, several o f Kant’s views are reminiscent o f Batteux’s. For example, as we have seen, Batteux divides the fine arts into three categories. So does Kant. Kant distinguishes the fine arts from the mechanical arts and the agreeable arts, a tripartite division quite similar to Batteux’s. Also, quite likely under the influence of Batteux, Kant defined the fine arts in terms o f representation. Fine art, Kant wrote, is a mode of representation which is intrinsically final, and which, although devoid of an end, has the effect of advancing the culture of the mental powers in the interests of social communication.26

This passage does not only indicate that Kant defined art in terms o f representation. It also indicates that Kant believed, like Batteux, that pleasure (or agreeableness) is not the only benefit that the fine arts provide. W e can also hear echoes of Batteux’s views on the combinations of the fine arts (in opera and other composite works) in Critique o f Judgement §51: The combination of the fine arts in one and the same product. Perhaps most importantly, Kant follows Batteux in holding that art is beautiful when it imitates nature. R.G. Saisselin quoted Batteux as saying that, “taste, for which the arts are made and of which it is the judge, must be satisfied when nature is well chosen and well imitated by the arts.” Saisselin then added that, “This was said by Kant later, but with greater

24 John Pizer, ‘Lessing’s Reception of Charles Batteux,’ Lessing Yearbook, 21 (1989), 2 9 -4 3 . 25 Immanuel Kant, The Critique o f Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 140. 26 Ibid., p. 166.

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strain for the reader.”27 This was undoubtedly an exaggeration, but Kant wrote that, “art can only be termed beautiful, where we are conscious of its being art, while yet it has the appearance of nature.”28 Kant, like the Berlin Academy of the Sciences, supported the view that art should be the imitation of nature. Moses Mendelssohn is another German philosopher who engaged with Batteux. In O n the m ain principles of the fine arts and sciences,’ Men­ delssohn discusses Batteux, whom he described as an “insightful student and critic o f the fine sciences” and “a fine writer.”29 Mendelssohn’s concerns differed from Batteux’s and so Batteux’s work was simply a starting point for Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn allowed that the arts are beautiful because they are imitations of nature: “Let this m u c h . . . be granted, that the imitation of nature is the only reason why the fine arts are pleasing to us.”30 Mendelssohn, however, wanted to know what beauty is and he believed that Batteux had not answered this question. (H ere Mendelssohn’s criticism o f Batteux is akin to one o f Diderot’s objections.) Elsewhere in Mendelssohn we find traces o f Batteux’s views. F or example, Mendelssohn grants architecture only a tenuous standing among the fine arts, and on very much the same grounds that Batteux had given: architecture is an art that primarily serves practical needs and is not, in the first instance, concerned with beauty. Mendelssohn also discusses Batteux in his Briefe, die neueste Litteratur betrejfend (1760). There, Mendelssohn takes issue with one o f Batteux’s views. In Part Two, Chapter Five o f The Fine Arts, Batteux considers the question o f why we enjoy artistic representations o f objects that we would, in reality, find unpleasant or disturbing. Batteux holds that if we experience in reality an object that is, say, dangerous, we feel a pleasant emotion and, at the same time, an unpleasant feeling o f danger. (It is not obvious that Batteux is right about this. It is not even clear what he has in mind when talking o f the pleasant emotion. Perhaps Batteux believes that it is an experience o f thrill or daring.) Batteux goes on to say that when we experience a work o f art we are usually aware that we are

27 Saisselin, Taste in Eighteenth Century France, p. 137. 28 Kant, Critique o f Judgement, p. 167. 29 Moses Mendelssohn, Philosophical Writings, trans. Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 170. 30 Ibid., p. 171.

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not actually experiencing a dangerous object. Consequently, we can experience the pleasant emotion without the unpleasant feeling of dan­ ger. Alternatively, if we are temporarily deceived by a work o f art, and believe that we are in danger, we are quickly disabused and become aware that we are only aware o f an artwork. W e then enjoy the feeling o f deliverance. Mendelssohn rejected this account o f how we enjoy the representation of unpleasant objects. Mendelssohn held that unpleasant objects in nature can be represented in such a way that they have positive aesthetic qualities. Johann Gottfried Herder also engaged with Batteux’s writings. In 1771 a new edition of Schlegel’s translation o f The Fine Arts appeared. Herder reviewed it for the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek and was scathing. He summed up his views of Batteux by quoting Shaftesbury (in the original English): “He must be very indifferently employ’d who would take upon him to answer Nonsense in Form , and put in upon the world to read a second book for the sake of the Impertinencys of a form er.”31 Herder was opposed to virtually every element o f The Fine Arts. He believed that poetry was fundamentally different from painting and music. He was sceptical about the view that the essence o f art is imitation. To the extent that there was something com m on to the arts, he was attracted to Baumgarten’s belief that the arts have in com m on the pursuit o f sensu­ ous perfection. Nevertheless, the frequency with which Herder refers to Batteux is evidence o f the importance o f The Fine Arts in the eighteenth century. For example, Herder refers to “the so-called French theory o f the

beaux arts and belles lettres in general - by which I mean the works o f Batteux.”32 Evidence of Batteux’s influence in the English-speaking world is m ore difficult to find than evidence of his im pact in Germany. In the course o f the eighteenth century, The Fine Arts was partially translated into Eng­ lish three

times.

Another

partial

translation

appeared

in

early

nineteenth-century America. (For details on earlier translations of the book, see below.) The major British philosophers o f art, however, either do not mention Batteux at all or mention him only in passing. James

31 Quoted in Robert T. Clark, Jr., Herder: His Life and Thought (Berkeley, C.A.: Univer­ sity of California Press, 1969), p. 172. 32 Johann Gottfried Herder, Selected Writings on Aesthetics, trans. Gregory Moore (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 276.

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Beattie makes a passing reference to Batteux in his Essay on Poetry and Music (1776) and Oliver Goldsmith almost certainly read Batteux, but otherwise it is difficult to find direct evidence of Batteux’s impact across the English Channel. While there is little direct evidence that Batteux influenced anglo­ phone philosophy o f art, there is a fair bit of circumstantial evidence that he did. (In this context, it is worth noting that citation was much less practised in the eighteenth century than it is now.) There is evidence that Hume was aware o f Batteux’s work. Certainly, Hume was aware of developments in French philosophy of art. He cites both Dubos and de Fontenelle in O f Tragedy.’ Ted Gracyk has argued that Hume was also aware of Batteux.33 Hume, like Batteux, distinguishes “the finer arts” (as Hume calls them) from the mechanical arts on the basis of their ends: the finer arts have the goal of providing pleasure. Like Batteux, Hume suggests that moral evaluation influences aesthetic evaluation. There is another similarity between Batteux and Hume on which Gracyk does not remark. Both writers are opposed to simple subjectivism when it comes to the evaluation o f artworks. They both believe that there is a standard of taste other than individual sentiments or feelings. Nevertheless, both writers allow that there are disagreements about the values of artworks that are irresolvable. In the case of Batteux, the disagreement is attributable, in part, to the fact that n ot everyone has precisely the same capacity to assess the goodness o f an artwork. Each person is attracted to different aspects of the natural world: Each person is therefore allowed to have his own taste, provided that it is a taste for some part of nature. Some love the cheerful, others the serious. These love the artless, those, the grand, the majestic, and so on. (53)

Finally, some disagreement is attributable to people’s differing interests. M odern audiences, Batteux suggests, read Horace m ore than Virgil since, given our current situation, we have m ore to learn from Horace. Romans, in their situation, had m ore to learn from Virgil and favoured him. Nevertheless, Batteux believes that he is in a position to say that

33 Ted Gracyk, ‘Hume’s Aesthetics,’ The Stanford Encyclopedia o f Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) .

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some people have bad taste (perhaps because they have received a faulty education) and that, as a result, they make errors about the aesthetic value o f artworks. Here Batteux expresses a view similar to that adopted a few years later by Hume in O f the Standard of Taste.’ Hume writes that, “notwith­ standing all our endeavours to fix a standard of taste, and reconcile the discordant apprehensions o f men, there still rem ain two sources o f variation.” One o f Hume’s sources o f variation is the various tempera­ ments o f individuals: A young man, whose passions are warm, will be more sensibly touched with amorous and tender images, than a man more advanced in years, who takes pleasure in wise, philosophical reflections concerning the conduct of life and moderation of the passions.34 The similarity between the views of Hume and Batteux here may be coincidental, but it may indicate that Hume had read The Fine Arts. In this context, one more passage from Hume is worth noting. In O f the Standard of Taste,’ Hume holds that the true critic is familiar with a wide range of artworks. He writes that, “By comparison alone we fix the epithets of praise or blame, and learn how to assign the due degree o f each.” He then goes on to say that, The coarsest daubing contains a certain lustre of colours and exactness of imitation, which are so far beauties, and would affect the mind of a peasant or Indian with the highest admiration. The most vulgar ballads are not entirely destitute of harmony or nature.35 I draw attention to this passage because it recalls two o f Batteux’s doctrines. For a start, there is the suggestion that imitation is a beauty. Second, Hume suggests that the presence o f ‘nature’ in a vulgar ballad is a point in its favour. Perhaps Hume’s references to imitation and nature are only coincidental, but I think Batteux likely influenced him here. About a dozen years after the publication o f The Fine Arts, Edward Young published his Conjectures on Original Composition (1759). There he argues that m odern artists should strike out in bold new directions and not follow in the footsteps of antiquity. This was directly contrary to Batteux’s belief that moderns should follow the example o f ancient

34 David Hume, Four Dissertations (London: A. Miller, 1777), p. 244. 35 Ibid., p. 238.

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writers. Young’s advocacy of originality made him a founder of Roman­ ticism in a way that Batteux is not. Batteux was associated with classi­ cism. The rise of Romanticism, partly under the influence of Young and Herder, goes a long way towards explaining the eclipse of Batteux’s thought in the later years of the eighteenth century.

The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns As noted at the outset, The Fine Arts is a valuable resource when it comes to understanding the art of the eighteenth century. As a lover of the operas of Rameau and Charpentier, I find Batteux’s comm ents on the opera of his day intriguing and informative. His remarks on pastoral poetry were probably commonplace in his time, but for a modern reader they shed light on a genre that can now seem peculiar, to say the least. Here, however, I will focus on what Batteux has to say about the relative merits of ancient and m odem writers. In the eighteenth century, a lively debate raged on the question o f whether modern writers had equalled or even surpassed the ancient Greeks and Romans. According to the standard account, the Quarrel o f the Ancients and the Moderns, or the Battle of the Books, began when Charles Perrault issued a challenge in Le siècle de Louis le Grand (1687). Perrault made the audacious claim that the writers of his century were greater than those of antiquity. Perrault was not the first author to assert the superiority of modern writers to those of classical times, but his book seems to have turned a smouldering disagreement into a full-scale war. Campaigns were conducted on both sides of the English Channel. In France, Fontenelle lined up on the side of the moderns. Nicolas BoileauDespréaux led the forces of the ancients. (Apparently Boileau was almost apoplectic when Perrault presented his views at the Académie française.) In Britain, Sir William Temple launched the opening salvo on behalf of the ancients. William W otton returned fire on behalf of the moderns. Alexander Pope, in his Essay on Criticism, noted, Some the French Writers, some our own despise; The Ancients only, or the Modems prize.36

36

Essay on Criticism, p. 24.

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In the middle of the eighteenth century, Edward Young’s Conjectures on

Original Composition continued to manoeuvre on behalf of the m odems. Jonathan Swift (who had been employed in the household o f Temple) satirized the quarrel in The Battle o f the Books (17 0 4 ). The Battle o f the

Books seems as silly to m ost modern readers as it did to Swift. Never­ theless, in The Fine Arts, Batteux wades into the fray. Batteux proved himself a moderate. Throughout the book, he has almost nothing but praise for the ancient authors whom he admires. His firmly held view is that artists should imitate nature, but failing that, they should imitate the ancients: But if you are transported by the love of glory, read at least the works of those who have seen clearly. Read the ancients. Imitate them if you cannot imitate nature. (50)

A t the same time, he believes that the best modern authors have equalled them. W hen listing authors most worthy of emulation, Batteux lists Homer, Milton (the only English artist mentioned in the book), and Corneille. A good deal of Part Two, Chapter Four is devoted to the Quarrel. Much of the comparison o f modern French poetry with ancient poetry is rather arcane. Batteux discusses in some detail the poetical metres (o r rhythmic schemes) of antiquity and his own day. W e find, for example, Batteux investigating the relative advantages of writing in dactylic hexameter and Alexandrines. He reaches the conclusion that the poetical metres of his time do not disadvantage French poets. Indeed, the poetical metres of the French poets m ay give them greater flexibility. He quotes a variety o f passages from French poetry to illustrate the point that m odem rhythmic schemes can have, “in the hands of the best poets, the same effect on the ear as Latin verse has.” (9 0 -1 ) In Batteux’s view, the poetry of the ancients only enjoys its higher reputation because the educational system of his day devoted so much time to reading and analysing ancient verse. W e ought, he believes, at least to reflect maturely on the relative merits o f French literature now that it “has become the most polished and the m ost beautiful language in the world, and has produced masterpieces in every genre.” (96) Still, Batteux allowed, he certainly “did not believe that everything that [he has] written is unobjectionable to some people.” (97) Although Batteux believes that the moderns have equalled the ancients, he still believes that modern artists should emulate their forebears. The

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m odem s have succeeded by following rules established by the ancients. In this respect, as already noted, Batteux differs from Edward Young. Young’s advocacy o f originality makes him a founder o f Romanticism in a way that Batteux is not. Indeed, Batteux fell into disfavour late in the eighteenth century at least partly because he was seen as an advocate of the classics at a time when Romanticism was ascendant.

Aesthetic cognitivism Aesthetic cognitivism is one o f the most important doctrines advocated in The Fine Arts and a doctrine that long continued to influence phil­ osophy o f art. Aesthetic cognitivism is the view that works o f art are, in an important way, sources of knowledge. In particular, it is the view that they are sources o f knowledge about human nature, emotion, and ethics. Formalism, the view that art is appreciated as pure form (and not as a source of knowledge), was commonplace in the twentieth century. Clive Bell’s Art (1914) set the tone for much o f the century. Mid-century, influential critics such as Clement Greenberg and prominent philo­ sophers such as M onroe Beardsley continued to espouse formalism. Towards the end of the century, a number o f philosophers, led by Nelson Goodman and, later, Noël Carroll, Berys Gaut, and Jenefer Robinson, among others, began to defend aesthetic cognitivism. While aesthetic cognitivists are now numerous, some prominent philosophers, among them Peter Lamarque, continue to be sceptical about the position. At a time when aesthetic cognitivism is hotly debated, Batteux deserves to be recognized as an early exponent of the position. As we have seen, the single principle to which all art is reduced is the principle o f imitation. They imitate belle nature with a view to contributing to knowledge and, in particular, moral knowledge. Batteux was not the inventor o f aesthetic cognitivism. Its roots lie in antiquity, in the debate between Plato (who denied that art is a source of knowledge) and Aristotle (the founder of aesthetic cognitivism). In his aesthetic cogni­ tivism, as in so m uch else, Batteux is a follower of Aristotle. Although Batteux was an aesthetic cognitivist, he was not a perfectly consistent one. At the outset of his book, he identifies pleasure as the goal o f the fine arts. Later he suggests that, “the goal of poetry is to produce emotion, to move, and to please.” (73) The fine arts are distinguished from the mechanical arts (and the third class o f arts, such as architecture) by

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their lack o f utility. Yet, if art is a source of knowledge, including moral knowledge, then it has utility. (Batteux indicates at several points that art is a source o f moral knowledge, or lessons in virtue.) Batteux’s problem is that he is following Aristotle too closely. As we have seen, Aristotle suggests both that the defining characteristic of the imitative arts is that they are a source o f pleasure and that they are a source of knowledge. Batteux is apparently aware of the tension in his thought and tries to reconcile his aesthetic cognitivism with his view that pleasure is the defining feature o f the fine arts. Three passages are particularly relevant here. In the first, he writes that, The goal of poetry is to please and to please by arousing the emotions. But in order to give us perfect and enduring pleasure, it should only arouse emotions that it is important that we feel intensely and that are not enemies of wisdom. (73)

Elsewhere, he goes farther and indicates that the arts do have utility. He writes that, If, indeed, in nature and in the arts things move us to the degree that they concern us, it follows that artworks that please us and serve our practical interests will be more moving than those that do only one or the other. (76)

Finally, there is a passage where Batteux connects features that formalists identify as sources of pleasure (unity and proportion) with aesthetic cognitivism: unity, proportion, truth, and the excellence of the parts are the source o f . . . pleasure. (103)

This passage, like the previous one, suggests knowledge (or truth) is a source of pleasure. Batteux could have avoided the tension in his thought by defining the fine arts in terms of imitation, rather than in terms of pleasure. In fact, this is what he does when he defines the individual fine arts (as opposed to distinguishing the class o f fine arts from the other sorts o f arts): W e will define painting, sculpture, and dance as imitations of belle nature by means of colours, three-dimensional shapes, and bodily attitudes. Music and poetry are imitations of belle nature expressed in sounds or by rhythmic speech. (20)

Had Batteux consistently defined the fine arts in terms of imitation, he would have faced another problem. The problem is that arts other than

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fine arts imitate or represent the world. For example, the scientist and the historian represent the world. Batteux’s solution to this problem would be to say that the artist (unlike the scientist or historian) represents belle nature. Aesthetic cognitivism faces several challenges. One pressing challenge is to explain how works o f art that present us with fictions can be a source o f knowledge about the actual world. Batteux’s conception o f belle nature enables him to meet this challenge. Indeed, Batteux importantly antici­ pates some views o f Nelson Goodman. Goodman held that pictures can, as he says, “refer generally.” That is, a picture that is not a picture of some particular thing can be a picture o f some class of things in general. For example, a drawing o f a smew in an encyclopaedia m ay fail to refer to any particular smew and yet succeed in referring to all smews.37 Similarly, Batteux holds that a representation of belle nature succeeds in referring to (or, as he would say, representing) a class o f objects. Alceste (in Molière’s

Misanthrope) is a work of fiction, and does not represent a particular misanthrope. He does, however, represent misanthropes in general. Representations o f belle nature can cast light on real objects. Taking

The Misanthrope as an example, Batteux writes that Molière “has taught us more than a careful historian who recorded the m any characteristics o f a real misanthrope would have done.” (12) On Batteux’s view, art­ works provide us with insight into particulars by providing us with insight into the types to which they belong. Batteux anticipated the (now) comm on view that works of art, and in particular works of literature, are a source o f moral knowledge. He holds that, The poems of Homer and Virgil are not frivolous romances in which the mind is led astray by a foolish imagination. On the contrary, we should regard them as great bodies of teachings, as national epics, which contain the history of a state, the spirit of government, the fundamental principles of morality, religious doc­ trines, and all social responsibilities. (77)

Prior to undertaking an epic, Batteux believes, the poet needs to choose the moral principle that he will illustrate. Even pastoral poetry can be a “summary o f all moral precepts.” According to Batteux, “the comparison o f our situation with that of shepherds simplifies our manners and grad­ ually restores a natural taste.” (114) On these points there was and is

37 Nelson Goodman, ‘Reply to Beardsley,’ Erkenntnis, 12 (1978), pp. 169-70.

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widespread, though far from universal, agreement H ow literature contrib­ utes to moral knowledge is, however, imperfectly understood. Part of the answer is provided by reference to the representation of types. Batteux does, however, make some other contributions to understanding how works of literature can convey moral knowledge. There is an emerging consensus that the propositional theory of art is mistaken. (The propositional theory of art is the view that works of art contribute to knowledge by stating propositions.) Throughout much of the twentieth century, many aesthetic cognitivists adopted this theory but now most philosophers o f art agree that works of literature do not convey knowledge simply by stating propositions. The more recent view is that works of literature shape perceptions of the world (and in p ar­ ticular of human beings) in cognitively useful ways. The question is then how works of art do this. In part, Batteux believes, works of literature cultivate moral knowledge (or virtue) simply by setting good examples. He writes that, If history makes the virtues bloom, why wouldn’t the shrewdness of Odysseus or the valour of Achilles cause them to blossom in the same way? (58)

Elsewhere he adds that, Great artists display in their works the features of belle nature— Without thinking, audience members apply the examples to themselves: little by little, they throw off [character traits] that are inappropriate and add those that are lacked. Manners, modes of speech, and external appearances are initially seen to be reformed, then the reformation extends to their minds. They want their thoughts, when expressed publicly, to appear considered, natural, and deserving of the respect of other people. Soon the heart also submits. People want to appear good, unaffected, and just. (59)

Here Batteux is, perhaps, unduly optimistic. He counts upon audience members having an innate m oral sense. Other suggestions by Batteux are m ore promising. One way in which artworks seem to contribute to knowledge is that they get audience members to notice features of the world that they have overlooked. One way to draw attention to some feature of the world is to juxtapose it with contrasting features.38 (Many artists employ juxtaposition. For

38

2001).

For this sort of position see James O. Young, A rt and Knowledge (London: Routledge,

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example, Jane Austen often contrasts a superficially appealing but m or­ ally flawed hero with a good m an who has certain superficial flaws. Think, for example, o f the juxtaposition of Darcy and W ickham or Knightly and Willoughby. This enables readers to see m ore clearly what is of true worth.) At a couple of points, Batteux indicates that juxtaposition is a way in which artworks contribute to knowledge of virtue. He writes, for example, that, Every poet and every painter provides us with a thousand contrasts. There is the contrast of two brothers, one too indulgent and the other too hard-hearted. The miserly father is juxtaposed with a prodigal son, the misanthrope with the man of the world who forgives everyone. There is old Priam at the feet of young Achilles, kissing Achilles’ hands, still stained with the blood of his sons. If the characters are not different in kind, they must differ at least in degree. Horatius and Curiace are two heroes whose characteristic is valour. The one, however, is proud while the other is more human. (82)

The suggestion here seems to be that we gain insight into some moral traits or virtues by seeing them contrasted with others. Later in The Fine

Arts, Batteux makes a related point when he writes that, W hat a multitude of warriors in the Iliadl Diomedes, Odysseus, Ajax, and Hector play different roles, but they are all related to Achilles. They are steps that the poet has prepared in order to raise our ideas until they comprehend the sublime valour of his principal hero. The difference between Achilles and everyone else would have been less apparent if the range of heroes did not draw attention to it. Our conception of Achilles would be less grand and more imperfect without comparison to other heroes. (145)

Recently, several authors have argued that works of literature can be a source of knowledge by influencing emotional responses. Arguments for this conclusion are found in both the philosophical39 and the psycho­ logical literature.40 Batteux seems to have anticipated this view as well. He holds that, in order to give us a perfect and enduring pleasure, it [poetry] should only arouse emotions that it is important that we feel intensely and that are not enemies of

39 See, for example, Jenefer Robinson, Deeper Than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and A rt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). 40 See, for example, Maja Djikic, Keith Oatley, Sara Zoeterman, and Jordan B. Peterson, O n Being Moved by Art: How Reading Fiction Transforms the Self,’ Creativity Research Journal, 21 (2009), 2 4 -9 .

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wisdom. Abhorrence of crime followed by shame, fear, and repentance among other tortures; compassion for the unfortunate, which has an application nearly as extensive as that of humaneness; admiration for great exemplars, which inspire virtue in the heart; heroic and, consequently, proper love: these, everyone allows, are the emotions that poetry should address. (77)

I do not maintain Batteux’s aesthetic cognitivism was not anticipated by other writers or that philosophers have not since made progress in arguing for the position. M y point is only that Batteux deserves recog­ nition as a significant figure in the history of aesthetics who was opposed to formalism and the view that art is simply a source of pleasure. He distinguishes the fine arts from other arts by identifying them as the arts concerned solely with pleasure, but when push comes to shove, it is clear that he believes that art is an important source of knowledge, particularly moral knowledge.

Batteux on music Some of the most interesting chapters o f The Fine Arts are those devoted to music. (In contrast, Batteux has very little to say about painting and nothing of enduring interest.) Music, particularly instrumental music, has often been regarded as quite unlike the other arts. Other arts, m any people believe, are representational and can be the source o f knowledge, but music is appreciated as pure musical form. Batteux presents the basis o f a case for the conclusion that music can be about the emotions and can be a source of psychological insight. This case is central to the inclusion o f music in his system of the fine arts. Batteux is adamantly opposed to formalism about music. Formalism is the view that music is appreciated as empty form. According to formal­ ism, we appreciate music m uch as we appreciate the abstract pattern on a Persian carpet or as we appreciate an elegant mathematical proof. In two passages Batteux rejects formalism (without calling it by this name). In the first, he writes that, the learned musician m ay. . . congratulate himself on having, by means o f a mathematical formula, reconciled tones that seemed completely incompatible. Nevertheless, if his composition means nothing, I would compare it to the bodily movements of orators which are merely signs of life. Or I would compare the composition to those poems that are only rhythmic noise or to those writers’ tricks that are only frivolous ornaments. (137)

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In another place he writes that, Let us conclude then that music, no matter what careful calculation goes into the selection of notes and no matter how mathematically perfect the intervals, may have no meaning. In this case, we can compare it to a prism that presents lovely colours, but is no picture. It would be like a chromatic harpsichord that offers us colours and series of colours. It would amuse the eyes, perhaps, but bore the mind. (138)

Batteux believes that music must be about the emotions or we will soon lose interest in it. For this reason, he does not try to understand representation in music simply in terms o f the imitation o f sounds such as church bells, bird­ songs, and the clash o f arms. Even a committed formalist can admit that music sometimes imitates such sounds. (Indeed, Peter Kivy, the doyen of contem porary formalists, has written an entire book on how music can represent in this manner.41) This sort of musical representation is trivial, as Batteux recognizes. He writes that: There are two sorts of music: the first imitates only inanimate sounds and noises. This sort of composition is to music as the landscape is to painting. (137)

If music is to be an art that can have a profundity comparable to that found in poetry and painting, it will need to be concerned with the emotions. Batteux continues: “The other sort of music expresses animate sounds that are associated with emotions. This music is a portrait of a persona.” (137) One of Batteux’s central claims is that musical expression draws upon pre-existing natural forms of expression. He holds that gestures and tones are “natural means o f expression” and “they are especially suited to the expression of emotion.” (129) Musicians draw upon these natural means of expression in writing music: “The music is half-formed in the words that express some emotion. It takes only a little art to turn the words into music.” (133) W e can call this the resemblance theory of musical expression. Batteux’s views were far from unique in the eighteenth century. Philosophers and writers on music both before and after him made similar comments about the resemblance between music and expressive

41 Peter Kivy, Sound an d Semblance: Reflections on Musical Representation (Cornell, N .Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).

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speech and gesture. Dubos anticipates Batteux’s views on music: “The musician imitates the notes, accents, sighs, and inflexions o f the voice; and in short all those sounds, by which nature herself expresses her sentiments and passions.”42 Another French writer, André Morellet, adopted a view similar to Batteux’s and developed it in m ore detail. Morellet concluded that, “It is above all in the imitation of the accents of the great passions that music will triumph.”43 In Britain, we find Francis Hutcheson writing that, “The human Voice is obviously vary’d by all the stronger Passions.” He added that we can discern “resemblance between the Air of a Tune, whether sung or play’d upon an Instrum ent. . . to the sound of the human voice.”44 Thomas Reid similarly wrote that a melody can be “an imitation of the tones of the human voice in the expression of some sentiment or passion.”45 Reid also maintained that the musician’s art is “nothing else but the language of nature” since it can resemble “modulations of the voice” and “gestures.”46 The German writer Johann Georg Sulzer believed that, The musician must pay the most scrupulous attention to a study of natural expression; speech invariably has something about it that melody can imitate, however much the two may differ. Joy is expressed in sonorous tones, unhurried tempi and in limited graduations of pitch and dynamics. Sadness unburdens itself slowly, from the depths of the heart, and is of sombre hue.47

Batteux’s views on the relationship between music and natural forms o f expression are not so much strikingly original as part of a broad eighteenth-century consensus. In the course of the twentieth century, philosophers again took up the view that music is expressive of emotion by resembling vocal and non­ vocal expressive behaviour. Two philosophers became champions of this

42 Dubos, Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting and Music, pp. 360-1. 43 André Morellet, De l’Expression en musique et de l’imitation dans les arts, in Edward A. Lippman (ed.), Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader (New York: Pendragon Books, 1986), vol. 1, p. 275. 44 Hutcheson, A n Inquiry into the Original o f Our Ideas o f Beauty and Virtue, p. 68. 45 Thomas Reid, The Works o f Thomas Reid, D.D., Third Edition (Edinburgh: M cLachlan and Stewart, 1852), p. 504. 46 Ibid., p. 118. 47 Johann Georg Sulzer, ‘Expression in Music (Ausdruck in der Mustk),’ in Peter le Huray and James Day (eds.), Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 125.

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view: Kivy and Stephen Davies.48 Psychologists then entered into the fray and now the hypothesis that music is experienced as expressive of emotion because it resembles hum an expressive behaviour enjoys strong empirical support. For example, Patrik N. Juslin and Petri Laukka have surveyed 140 articles about musical expression and found clear correl­ ations between how music and ordinary vocalizations are expressive of emotion.49 Juslin and Laukka focus on resemblance between music and the vocal expression of emotion, but psychological research also supports the hypothesis that music can resemble experience o f bodily motions. One of Batteux’s anecdotes is particularly interesting in light o f recent research. He recounts how Lully would listen to the actress known as La Chammelé declaim passages. He would then record her tones and incorporate them into his compositions. Interestingly, this practice has been vindicated in a recent psychological experiment. In this experiment female acting students were asked to utter two-syllable lines in a manner expressive o f a given emotion. F o r example, they would recite a line such as ‘Let’s go,’ ‘C om e here,’ or ‘Come on’ in an angry, happy, pleasant, or sad tone o f voice. The recitations were recorded and subjected to acoustic analysis. One o f the m ost striking findings was that when lines were uttered in a m anner expressive of sadness, they tended to fall a m inor third from the first to the second syllable. In music, a falling m inor third is experienced as expressive o f sadness. The experimenters found other interesting correlations as well. For example, not surprisingly, utterances expressive of anger were louder (83 decibels on average) than utterances expressive o f pleasant­ ness (76 decibels). The experimenters concluded that their findings “support the theory that hum an vocal expressions and music share an acoustic code for comm unicating sadness.”50

48 Peter Kivy, Sound Sentiment: A n Essay on the Musical Emotions (Philadelphia, P.A.: Temple University Press, 1989). Stephen Davies, Musical M eaning and Expression (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994). For a recent review of the resemblance theory of musical expression, see James O. Young, Critique o f P ure Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), ch. 1. 49 Patrik N. Juslin and Petri Laukka, ‘Communication of Emotions in Vocal Expression and Music Performance: Different Channels, Same Code?’ Psychological Bulletin, 129 (2003), 7 7 0 -8 1 4 . 50 Meagin E. Curtis and Jamshed J. Bharucha, ‘The Minor Third Communicates Sadness in Speech, Mirroring Its Use in Music,’ Emotion, 10 (2010), 3 3 5 -4 8 .

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Some comm entators have detected a tension in Batteux’s writings on music. Le Huray and Day write that Batteux “com es close to admitting that musical expression has little or nothing to do with imitation.”51 In support o f this contention, they cite this passage from The Fine Arts: It is true, someone might say, that there are some emotions that we recognize in a piece of music. Love, joy, and sadness are examples. But for each readily identifiable expressive passage, there are a thousand others where we cannot say what is expressed. (138)

Le Huray and Day also write that Batteux failed “to distinguish clearly between representation and expression, even though the seeds of the distinction are implicit in sections o f the b o o k ”52 As far as I can see, nothing in The Fine Arts supports the claim that Batteux believes that expression has nothing to do with imitation. The passage that le Huray and Day cite in support o f their position is a complete non sequitur. In this passage, Batteux simply expresses the (quite com m on) view that music can be expressive of (or represent) some emotion without us being able to name the emotion. T.S. Eliot expressed this view when he wrote that, beyond the nameable, classifiable emotions and motives of our conscious life when directed towards action. . . there is a fringe of indefinite extent, of feeling which we can only detect, so to speak, out of the corner of the eye and can never completely focus. . . feelings which only music can express.53

Similarly, Mahler remarked that, “as long as I can express an experience in words I should never try to put it into music.”54 It is hard to see how this view about the difficulty of capturing emotion in words entails that musical expression has little or nothing to do with imitation. Having disposed of this red herring, it is easy to see that Batteux has a perfectly consistent position. His view is that music represents emotion by being expressive of emotion. Morellet also adopted this view. He wrote that,

51 Peter le Huray and James Day, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and EarlyNineteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 4 0 -1 . 52 Ibid., p. 41. 53 T.S. Eliot, Poetry and Drama (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 4 2 -3 . 54 Knud M artner (ed.), Selected Letters o f Gustav Mahler, trans. Eithne Wilkins, Ernst Kaiser, and Bill Hopkins (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), p. 179.

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I regard as synonymous. . . the terms express and depict. . . and as all depiction is an imitation, to ask if music has expression, and in what the expression consists, is to ask if music imitates, and how.55

In the chapters that concern music, Batteux has simply adopted talk about expression rather than talk about imitation or representation. This is probably because talk about expression has long been com m on in writing about music. So far, however, Batteux only has an account of how music can represent expressive behaviour or the expression o f emotion. He has not given us an account of how music can represent emotion itself. Yet he also wants to hold that music can represent emotion: “the principal goal of music and dance must be imitation of feelings.” (131) Music and dance provide a “skilful portrait of human emotions.” (7) It must be admitted that Batteux does not have a well-worked-out account of how music represents emotion, but he gives us hints of such an account. Likely he believed that the representation o f emotion in music was linked to the arousal of emotion by music. Certainly Batteux believed that music arouses emotions in listeners. He writes that, “The expression of emotion arouses emotions in the heart, firing and agitating it.” (133) He also holds that the end of the arts, including the arts of poetry, music, and dance, “is to convey the ideas and feelings o f the artist to the minds and hearts of those with whom he wants to comm unicate.” Arguably, the only way to represent and convey feelings is to arouse them in members o f the audience. This is certainly the view that Rousseau to o k Rousseau held that, N ot only will the musician stir up the sea, fan the blaze, make rivulets flow, rains fall and torrents rage, but he will paint the horrors of a fearful desert, he will darken the walls of a subterranean prison, calm the tempest, make the air tranquil and serene, and he will make the orchestra spread abroad a new and pleasing fragrance. He will not literally imitate things, but he will excite in the soul feelings similar to those that it experiences when it sees them.56

55 André Morellet, D e l’Expression en musique et de l’imitation dans les arts, in Edward A. Lippman (ed.), Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader (New York: Pendragon Books, 1986), vol. 1, p. 269. 56 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique, in le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries, pp. 109-10.

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I do not think that we can say with certainty that Batteux would endorse this position, but he may well have. His view that the arts communicate emotion suggests that he would have done so. W hen Batteux speaks about music, he is primarily thinking of vocal music. He writes that, “Music has meaning in instrumental music, where it lives a half-life. Add the other half of its being and it becomes vocal music, where it becomes a picture of the human heart.” The view that vocal music is the most expressive and highest form of music was com m on in the mid-eighteenth century. Even as late as 1789, Thomas Twining wrote, in a manner reminiscent of Batteux, that, the expressions of Music considered in itself, and without words, are, (within certain limits,) vague, general, and equivocal___The effect of words, is, to strengthen the expression of Music, by confining it - by giving it a precise direction, supplying it with ideas, circumstances, and an object, and, by this means raising it from a calm and general disposition, or emotion, into something approaching, at least, to the strong feeling of a particular and determinate

passion.57 Later in the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth century, instru­ mental music increased in prestige, and it was often thought to be the equal of vocal music, or even superior to it.

Batteux and the modern system of the fine arts Today, Batteux is best remembered as the originator of the modern system o f the arts. Nowadays there is quite widespread agreement about what counts as the fine arts. Literature, music, painting, sculpture, and dance will show up on almost any list of the fine arts. Other arts (fencing and cookery, for example) are generally excluded from the list. Paul Oscar Kristeller famously argued that the membership in the ‘system’ (as he called it) of the fine arts was established in the eighteenth century. Batteux is at the centre of the story he told: The decisive step toward a system of the fine arts was taken by the Abbe [sic] Batteux in his famous and influential treatise, Les beaux arts réduits à un même

57 Thomas Twining, Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry, Translated; with Notes on the Trans­ lation and Original, and Two Dissertations on Poetical and Musical Imitation (London, 1815), pp. 5 1 -2 .

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principe (1746). It is true that many elements of his system were derived from previous authors, but at the same time it should not be overlooked that he was the first to set forth a clearcut system of the fine arts in a treatise devoted exclusively to this subject.58

Kristeller, drawing upon an astounding breadth of knowledge, argued that ancient, medieval, and renaissance thinkers did not have a conception of the fine arts anything like the m odern one. He noted that the ancients talked about τέχνη ( techné) and ars but these concepts do not m ap neatly onto the fine arts as we understand them. All sorts o f things that we would call crafts or sciences fall under the rubric of τέχνη or ars. Kristeller also argued that the ancient terms did not apply to paradigm cases o f the fine arts. For example, neither Plato nor Aristotle puts architecture in the same category as painting o r poetry. Kristeller held that the Middle Ages no m ore had our conception of the fine arts than did the ancient world. Aquinas, for example, applied the term artes to shoemaking, cooking, juggling, gram mar, and arithmetic as well as to painting, sculpture, poetry, and music.59 In the renais­ sance, Kristeller observes, Castiglione did not clearly segregate the arts o f poetry, painting, and music from the arts of fencing, horse riding, and numismatics. Kristeller allows that Batteux did not create the m odern system of the arts ex nihilo. The modern conception o f the fine arts evolved over a period of time. In the sixteenth century, Giorgio Vasari’s conception of the arti del disegno grouped together painting, sculpture, and architec­ ture, distinguishing them from crafts. Kristeller regards this as a step towards the modern conception o f the fine arts. He believes that Jocobus Pontanus took another step in his Poeticarum Institutionum libri III (1600). Going beyond the ancients, Pontanus grouped together painting, poetry, and music but he omitted the other arts. According to Kristeller, even as late as 1719 Dubos “fails to give anywhere a precise list of the arts other than poetry and painting or to separate them consistently from other fields of professions.”60

58 Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics (II),’ Journal o f the History o f Ideas, 13 (1952), p. 20. 59 Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘The Modern System o f the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics (I),’ Journal o f the History o f Ideas, 12 (1951), p. 509. 60 Kristeller, ‘The Modern System o f the Arts (II),’ p. 19.

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All of this changed, Kristeller believed, with Batteux. In Batteux poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and dance are clearly identified as the fine arts and distinguished from the mechanical arts. Kristeller’s account of the origin of the modern conception o f the arts has been almost universally accepted. It is cited as an authority in standard reference works on the history of aesthetics.61 It is widely anthologized.62 It is adopted by Larry Shiner in his book The Invention

o f Art.63 Recently, however, it has com e in for criticism by James I. Porter.64 In essence, Porter presents two objections to the received view. The first is that the view presented by Batteux was anticipated in the ancient world. The other is that Batteux did not succeed in estab­ lishing a consensus about what constitute the fine arts and there was no system of the fine arts in the eighteenth century. Porter performed a useful service in reopening the debate initiated by Kristeller, but he did not succeed in overturning the established view. Consider his first objection. He holds that the membership o f the class o f the fine arts was not firmly established in the eighteenth century. This is true, but it has not been firmly established ever since. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that in the eighteenth century there was widespread agreement about membership in the fine arts. As Kivy has convincingly argued, that is good enough from the perspective o f Kristeller’s hypoth­ esis.65 So long as poetry (that is, literature), painting, sculpture, and music (and perhaps a few others such as dance and architecture) are clearly regarded as a class and distinguished from other (non-fine) arts such as agriculture and fencing, the category (or system) of the fine arts has been established.

61 For example, Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia o f Medieval Philosophy (D or­ drecht: Springer, 2011), p. 32. Kristeller reworked material from his original essay for Origins o f Aesthetics,’ in Michael Kelly (ed.), Encyclopedia o f Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), vol. 3, pp. 4 1 6 -2 8 . 62 For example, in Peter Kivy (ed.), Essays on the History o f Aesthetics (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1992), pp. 3 -6 4 . 63 Larry Shiner, The Invention o f Art: A Cultural History (Chicago, I.L.: University o f Chicago Press, 2001). 64 James I. Porter, ‘Is Art Modern? Kristeller’s “Modem System of the Arts” Recon­ sidered,’ British Journal o f Aesthetics, 49 (2009), 1 -2 4 . 65 Peter Kivy, ‘W hat Ready Happened in the Eighteenth Century: The “Modern System” Re-examined (Again),’ British Journal o f Aesthetics, 52 (2012), p. 64.

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The other question is whether something like the eighteenth-century conception of the fine arts existed at an earlier period; in particular, whether it existed in antiquity. I do not believe that Porter makes a convincing case for this conclusion. The conclusion that the ancients had a conception similar to Batteux’s conception of the fine arts requires a closer reading of the ancient texts than Porter provides. In one respect, Porter is completely right. He notes that Batteux, for all the originality attributed to him by Kristeller and others, would have been very surprised to find that he had originated the system o f the fine arts. As we have seen, he saw himself as re-articulating a view that the ancients had held. W e have already seen that Aristotle had a conception o f the imitative arts that is exactly parallel to Batteux’s conception of the fine arts. There is also a good deal of evidence that Plato, like Aristotle, had a conception o f the imitative arts, a conception coextensive with Batteux’s fine arts. As is well known, Book 10 of the Republic identifies poetry and painting as imitative arts. In that context, Plato does not mention music, dance, or sculpture. However, in other contexts he does seem to classify all o f these as imitative arts. Let us begin by considering music. Cratylus is a discussion of the correctness of names. A t one point, the question o f whether names are imitations arises and, if so, of what kind. Socrates then states that: In the first place we shall not, in my opinion, be making names, if we imitate things as we do in music, although musical imitation also is vocal; and secondly we shall make no names by imitating that which music imitates. W hat I mean is this: all objects have sound and shape, and many have color, have they not?66

I am reluctant to read too much into this passage. Pretty clearly, however, Plato is saying that music imitates. If music is an art, it follows that it is an imitative art. Plato also discusses music in the Laws. There Plato considers and rejects the suggestion that music is valuable as a source of knowledge. He then writes that, choric performances are representations of character, exhibited in actions and circumstances of every kind, in which, the several performers enact their parts by habit and imitative art.67

66

Cratylus, 4 2 3c-d .

67

Laws, 2.655d.

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In a passage on musical education, Plato writes that, singers of hymns to Dionysus ought to be exceptionally keen of perception regarding rhythms and harmonic compositions, in order that when dealing with musical representations of a good kind or a bad, by which the soul is emotionally affected, they may be able to pick out the reproductions of the good kind and of the bad, and having rejected the latter, may produce the other in public, and charm the souls of the children by singing them, and so challenge them all to accompany them in acquiring virtue by means of these representations.68

These and similar passages leave little doubt that Plato regarded music as an imitative art. I will quote one more passage from the Laws since it provides evidence that dance belongs on Plato’s list of the imitative arts. Athenian: Well, then, do we still put our trust in those former statements of ours, in which we said that matters of rhythm and music generally are imitations of the manners of good or bad men? Or how do we stand? Clinias: Our view at least remains unaltered. Athenian: W e assert, then, that every means must be employed, not only to prevent our children from desiring to copy different models in dancing or singing, but also to prevent anyone from tempting them by the inducement of pleasures of all sorts.69

This passage suggests that when Plato speaks of “rhythm and music” as good imitations of the manners of m en, he is speaking of dance and music. Otherwise it is difficult to explain why, in his second speech, the Athenian makes reference to both dancing and singing. In the Sophist, sculpture is grouped together with painting as a form o f imitation.70 In Hippias M ajor (a work o f somewhat doubtful provenance) sculpture is described as an art, though n ot specifically as an imitative art.71 The Gorgias is concerned with the nature of rhetoric. Plato argues that rhetoric is not an art ( techné). (It is merely a “knack.”) Sculpture and painting are, however, grouped together and classified as arts.72 et κ ώ ν , one o f the Greek words for statue, literally means likeness or image. This is more evidence that sculpture was regarded as an imitative art in Greece. Perhaps the clearest statement o f a conception o f imitative arts is found in Eponomis. The authorship o f this dialogue is disputed. Some

68 Laws, 7.812b -c. 71 Hippias Major, 2 8 Id.

69 Laws, 7.798d -e. 72 Gorgias, 450c.

70 Sophist, 235e.

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ancients attributed it to Philip o f Opus and m any modern authors consider it among Plato’s apocrypha. For present purposes this does not matter. W hoever wrote this dialogue, it provides evidence of a conception of imitative arts in the ancient world. It also provides evi­ dence that this class is coextensive with Batteux’s fine arts. This is the relevant passage: And now that we see that the acquisition of necessaries is achieved by means of art, but that no such art makes any man wise, there may be some diversion remaining after this—imitative for the most part, but in no way serious. For they imitate with many instruments, and with many imitative acts, not altogether seemly, of their very bodies, in performances both of speech and of every Muse, and in those whereof painting is mother, and whereby many and most various designs are elaborated in many sorts, moist and dry; and though a man ply his craft in these with the greatest zeal, in nothing is he rendered wise by imitation.73 Here we find typical Platonic antipathy to the imitative arts. More importantly, we find poetry, music, painting (which imitates with moist media), and sculpture (which imitates with dry media) grouped together. The reference to imitation by m eans o f bodies m ay even be construed to include dance. W e then have the full set o f canonical imitative arts. No other imitative arts are m entioned and the imitative arts are clearly distinguished from those that provide for life’s necessities. I conclude that Plato likely had a conception o f imitative arts that corresponds to Batteux’s fine arts: poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and dance. In all probability, Aristotle took his list o f the five imitative arts directly from Plato. An advocate of Kristeller’s position will find unconvincing the argu­ m ent just given. Aristotle and Plato (and other ancients) m ay have lumped together poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and dance, but they regarded them as only some o f the arts. So, one might conclude, the ancients lacked the m odern conception o f the fine arts. In response to this reply, one could say that the ancients had a conception of a subset of the arts, namely the imitative arts, which corresponded to Batteux’s fine arts. Kristeller has a response to this response. He writes that, wherever Plato and Aristotle treat the “imitative arts” as a distinct group within the larger class of “arts,” this group seems to include, besides the “fine arts” in

73

Epinomis, 975d.

translator ’ s introduction

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which we are interested, other activities that are less “fine,” such as sophistry, or the use of the mirror, of magic tricks, or the imitation of animal voices.74

(Shiner echoes this judgement: “Plato elsewhere classifies sophistry, magic tricks, and the miming of animal voices as imitative arts as well.”75) Kristeller defends this judgement by reference to Plato’s Sophist 234e -2 3 5 a , Republic 596d, f and 602d, and Cratylus 423c. He also refers us to Poetics 1447a. Let us deal first with the passages from Plato. Cratylus 4 2 3 c does not support Kristeller’s judgement. As we have noted, Cratylus is concerned with the question o f whether names are correct either by convention or by nature. The point being made in 4 2 3 c is that “people who imitate sheep and cocks and other animals” are not nam ing the animals they imitate. There is absolutely no suggestion that making animal noises is an art, let alone one akin to painting and the other imitative arts. It is also hard to see how Republic 596d supports Kristeller’s case. The context is the discussion of painters and how they are not a source o f knowledge. Plato wants to show that the painter, in representing material objects, imitates (or represents) imitations of the forms. The reference to mirrors is made simply to belittle the painter’s accomplishments. Plato is n ot suggesting that the use of m irrors is an art akin to painting o r the others. (The idea that he would is ludicrous.) Similarly, in 602d, Plato downplays painters’ achievements, likening them to magic tricks (or, in a better translation, witchcraft). He does not say that witchcraft is an art or group it with the imitative arts. Finally, there is the passage from the Sophist. This dialogue is con ­ cerned with identifying the characteristics of sophists and distinguishing them from philosophers. Sophistry is an art. The sophist is said to be “a kind of a juggler, an im itator of realities.”76 This initially seems to support Kristeller’s position: sophistry is an art and it imitates reality. However, if we read on it becomes clear that the Sophist is even less supportive o f Kristeller’s position than the other dialogues. Plato suggests that sophistry is an “image-making art.” However, he then immediately distinguishes two sorts o f image-making arts.

“Likeness-making”

(elbtoXonouKos), such as painting or sculpture, is distinguished from a

74 Kristeller, ‘Modern System o f the Arts (I),’ p. 504. 75 Invention o f A rt, p. 21. 76 Sophist 235a.

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“fantastic art” (φανταστικήν ) that produces illusions. Plato places soph­ istry into this latter class. He is very clear: sophistry is quite unlike painting and sculpture. Painting, sculpture, and the other imitative arts imitate something actual while sophistry merely creates illusions. That is, there is an original object of which they give a likeness or representation. (O f course, we know that Plato thinks that this likeness is not very good.) Sophistry, in contrast, has no original object. It makes things up whole cloth, as it were. This is an important distinction and explains why sophistry does not show up in contexts where Plato discusses poetry, painting, and the other imitative arts. I imagine that it has been a while since someone checked Kristeller’s footnotes, but the passages he cites do not say what he says that they say. So let us turn back to Aristotle. Kristeller claims Aristotle runs together poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and dance with other imita­ tive arts and defends this claim by reference to Poetics 1447a. I have already quoted from this passage, but let us look at the entire section: Epic poetry, then, and the poetry of tragic drama, and, moreover, comedy and dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and harp-playing, these, speaking generally, may all be said to be “representations of life.” But they differ one from another in three ways: either in using means generically different or in repre­ senting different objects or in representing objects not in the same way but in a different manner. For just as by the use both of color and form people represent many objects, making likenesses of them — some having a knowledge of art and some working empirically — and just as others use the human voice; so is it also in the arts which we have mentioned, they all make their representations in rhythm and language and time, using these means either separately or in combination. For tune and rhythm alone are employed in flute-playing and harp-playing and in any other arts which have a similar function, as, for example, pipe-playing. Rhythm alone without tune is employed by dancers in their representations, for by means of rhythmical gestures they represent both char­ acter and experiences and actions. It is very hard to see how this passage supports Kristeller’s position. The only imitative arts Aristotle mentions are the ones that belong to Batteux’s category of the fine arts. Another passage from Aristotle has been quoted both in support of Kristeller’s hypothesis and against it. This is another passage that we have already had occasion to cite, Rhetoric 1371b. Porter writes: Sculpture, the fifth item on Batteux’s list, does not appear in the opening sections of the Poetics or in any other section of that treatise, but it does appear elsewhere,

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for example in Aristotle’s Rhetoric “painting, sculpture, poetry - and every product of skilful imitation.”77

Peter Kivy, writing in support of Kristeller and against Porter, seizes on this passage, saying that the addition of “and every product of skilful imitation” is an implicit admission that there are other imitative arts besides those that eventually ended up on Batteux’s list o f fine arts.78 Kivy concludes, as did Kristeller, that Aristotle believes that there are imitative arts that are not fine arts and, consequently, that his conception of the imitative arts does not anticipate Batteux’s conception o f fine arts. Let us ask whether this passage in the Rhetoric supports Kristeller or whether it is evidence that Aristotle and Batteux had similar conceptions. Let us begin with a translation of the full passage from which Porter quotes. I will stick for the moment with the translation by W . Rhys Roberts that Porter draws upon. The precise meaning of the text is important here and I do not wish to appear to prejudge the issue by a selective choice o f translation: since learning and wondering are pleasant, it follows that such things as acts of imitation must be pleasant - for instance, painting, sculpture, poetry - and every product of skilful imitation; this latter, even if the object imitated is not itself pleasant; for it is not the object itself which here gives delight; the spectator draws inferences (“That is a so-and-so”) and thus learns something fresh79.

The key phrase here is πάν S àv ev μεμιμημενον fj. Roberts gives this as “every product o f skilful imitation” while J.H. Freese, in the edition used by the Perseus Digital Library, translates it as “all that is well-imitated.” Porter and Kivy take “every product o f skilful imitation” to suggest that there are other imitative arts besides the ones Aristotle has listed. These arts would be the other forms of “skilful imitation.” But if the Freese translation is correct, and it is certainly more literal, there is no such suggestion. If Freese is right, πάν ο αν εΰ μεμιμημενον fj refers to objects that are well imitated, not to imitations.80 This interpretation is

77 Porter, ‘Is Art Modern?’ p. 8. 78 Peter Kivy, ‘W hat Really Happened in the Eighteenth Century,’ p. 68. 79 Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. W . Rhys Roberts (New York: Dover, 2004), p. 43. 80 Here is the passage in the original Greek: επ ει δ ε το μανθάνειν re ήδύ κα.1 τό θαυμάζειν, κ α ι τ α το ιά δ ε ανάγκη ή δ εα εΐναι, ο ΐο ν το re μιμούμενου, ώ σ π ερ γραφ ική κ αι αν δ ρ ια ν το π ο ιία κ α ι ποιη τική , κ α ι π άν δ αν ευ μ εμ ιμ η μ ενον η, καν η μη ήδύ a ν το το μεμιμημενον. Here is a literal, word-for-word translation of the key phrase: πάν. every (thing, neuter singular); . Trans, of “Poésie lyrique,” Encyclopédie ou Dic­ tionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 12. Paris, 1765. 118 “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” Psalm 19 (18 in the Greek numbering used by the Church of Rome). 119

The heavens instruct the earth To revere their author: Everything on earth Praises God the Creator. W hat song is more sublime Than the magnificent concert Of all the celestial bodies? W hat infinite grandeur! W hat divine harmony Results from their accord! Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, Ode II, Tirée du Psaume XVIII. 120 “Leads bloody Achilles to the shore of the Simoeis,/Or makes the Scheldt bend under the yoke of Louis.” Boileau, A rt o f Poetry, 2 .6 3 -4 .

122

WHERE THE PRINCIPLE OF IMITATION IS VERIFIED

These are the Odes o f Pindar, and several o f those by Horace, Malherbe, and Rousseau. There is a third type of lyrical poetry, which we can call the philo­ sophical or moral ode. In works o f this type the poet, enamoured of the beauty of virtue or repelled by the ugliness o f vice, abandons himself to the transports o f love o r hate to which the objects give rise. Fortune, dont la main couronne Les forfaits les plus inouïs, Du fa u x éclat qui t’environne Serons-nous toujours éblouis?121

Finally, there is a fourth type of lyric poetry, one that can only blossom in the lap o f luxury. Elle peint les festins, les danses, et les ris.122 This type includes Anacreonic odes and m ost French songs. AU types of lyric poetry, as we have seen, are particularly devoted to the emotions. This is the only difference between lyric poetry and other poetic genres. Since this difference only concerns the objects o f poetry, the principle o f imitation is not threatened. W hen poetry narrates a series o f events, it is epic or dramatic. W hen the action stops, and poetry depicts only the situation o f the mind— that is, the pure emotion that it experiences— then we have lyric poetry. W riting lyric poetry is only a matter of giving verse a form suitable for setting to music. The monologues of Polyeuctus, Camille, and Chim ene123 are bits of lyric. W hy could feelings be imitated in a drama, but not in an ode? W h y could we imitate emotion in a drama but not be able to imitate it in a song? Lyric poetry is no exception. All poets have the same goal, which is to imitate nature, and they all have the same method o f imitating it. In epic and dramatic poetry actions are depicted. Similarly, the [lyric] poet must take up the paintbrush and vividly represent things in the

121 The first four lines of Rousseau, Ode VI, A la fortune: Fortune, whose hands crown The most amazing crimes, Will the false glow that surrounds you Always dazzle us? 122 “It depicts the feasts, the dances, and the laughter.” Boileau, A rt o f Poetry, 2.66. 123 Characters from plays by Corneille. Polyeuctus is the title role in Polyeucte, Camille is a character in Horace, and Chimene is from El Cid (1637).

ON LYRIC POETRY 123 mind. In lyric poetry, which is devoted entirely to feelings, the poet must also take up the lyre and have his emotions fired. If he wants to write grand lyric, he m ust light a raging fire. If he wants to moderate his tones, the fire will subside. If the feelings are true and real, as when David composed his canticles, the poet is given an advantage, just as he is when, in writing a tragedy, he recounts actual historical events that do not need to be changed, o r only changed a little, as in Racine’s Esther.124 Poetic imitation must then be a m atter of adapting thoughts, turns o f phrase, and poetic harm ony to the reality of things. If the feelings are not true and real—that is to say, if the poet is not really in the situation that produces the feelings he wants to represent—he must arouse feelings in himself that resemble actual ones and then pretend that they are responses to actual objects. W hen he has reached the right degree o f fervour, he communi­ cates it. He is inspired. Every [lyric] poet comes to this: he begins by taking up his lyre and then draws his inspiration from it. This is the way that sacred, heroic, moral, and Anacreonic odes are written. The poet must experience naturally or by artifice the feelings o f admiration, gratitude, joy, sadness, and hate that he expresses. There is not a single ode by Horace o r Rousseau, if it has the true character of the genre, which fails to demonstrate this point. They are all, when they are perfect, pictures o f affects that the poet can experience very intensely, or very precisely, in the situations where they are found. Just as in epic and dramatic poetry we imitate actions and customs, in lyric poetry we sing of the feelings or imitated emotions. If it contains something real, this is mixed with something fictional in order to make a composite whole. The fictional embellishes the truth and the truth lends credibility to the fictional. Thus poetry sings of the emotions of the heart as well as reporting, narrating, or making gods and men speak. It is always a portrait of belle

nature, an artificial image, o r a picture whose single real virtue consists in being an accurate representation o f well-chosen and well-organized objects: ut pictura poesis.

124 Racine’s Esther (1689) was based on the biblical book o f Esther, which Batteux would have regarded as history.

SECTION TWO O n painting This Section will be very short because the principle of the imitation of

belle nature, having been applied to poetry, almost applies itself to painting. These two arts are so similar that in order to have discussed both of them at once, we need only change the names and put ‘painting,’ ‘designing,’ and ‘colouring’ in the places of ‘poetry,’ ‘story,’ and ‘versifi­ cation.’ The same genius creates both arts. The same taste guides the artist in the choice, organization, and mixing o f the large and small elements [of their works]. The same taste groups and contrasts these elements and chooses poses and nuances of colour. In short, the same taste governs composition, design, and colouring. Consequently, we have little to say on the means painting employs to imitate and express nature. Suppose that, in the imagination o f the painter, an ideal painting has been conceived in accordance with the rules of beauty. The painter’s first task in expressing, or giving birth to, the painting is to make a sketch. This begins to give a real and mind-independent existence to the object that he wants to depict and establishes the scope and limits o f his work. It is the design. The second task is to decide where to place the highlights and lowlights in order to give objects three-dimensionality and place them in relief in order to link them together, make them stand out from the background, and move them closer to or farther from the spectator. This is called chiaroscuro. The third task is to apply the colours that objects have in nature and to combine, shade, and lighten them as needed, so that the objects appear natural. This is colouring. These are the three elements of pictorial expression. They are so clearly particular applica­ tions of the general principle o f imitation as to leave no room for doubt. To what then do all the rules of painting reduce? To deceive the eyes by

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WHERE THE PRINCIPLE OF IMITATION IS VERIFIED

resembling an object and to make us believe that the object is real while it is only an image. This is evident. Let us go on to consider music and dance. W e will treat these two arts in a little m ore detail. However, we will not lose sight o f our goal, which is to prove that perfection in the arts depends on the imitation o f belle

nature.

SECTION THREE O n m usic and dance At one time, music had a far greater extent than it has at present.125 It lent its graces to all types o f sounds and movements, including song, dance, poetry, and declamation: Ars decoris in vocibus et motibus.126

* W e have abandoned the art of declamation. Would this be because we consider ourselves rich enough when it comes to language? If this were so, the Greeks and Romans would have had even more reason to neglect declamation. However, among the ancients connected narratives could be made entirely from gestures. W e know the history of pantomimes. When we complain about the feebleness of our eloquence, we sometimes blame our system of government. But if matters o f state are not addressed by our orators, do they not have religious matters? W as [Louis] Bourdaloue [(1 6 3 2 -1 7 0 4 ), a Jesuit professor o f rhetoric, philosophy, and theology; renowned for his preaching] more disadvantaged by his subject matter than Demosthenes [(3 84-322 BC), prominent Athenian statesman and orator] ? Is fear of damnation less vivid than fear of a tyrant? Do our orators not occasionally have a Milo [Titus Annius Milo Papalanus, a Roman politician charged with murder but successfully defended by Cicero in Pro Milone] to defend, a [Gaius] Verres [(c. 1 20-42 BC), prosecuted by Cicero for his mismanagement o f Sicily] to attack, or a Caesar to praise? Don’t we have speeches the reading o f which provides as m uch pleasure as those o f the ancients? However, we believe those of the ancients to be superior to all those we have. They were, perhaps, superior only in respect of declamation, which contributed almost twothirds of the expressiveness. By ‘declamation’ I mean gestures and tone o f voice. Demos­ thenes reduced the art of oratory to these and he spoke from his own experience. W e ask, where is the place in the oration for [Quintus] Ligarius [(fl. 50 BC), a Roman soldier who opposed Caesar in a civil war; Cicero successfully secured his pardon] that stayed the hand of Caesar? W e would not ask this had Cicero’s tones and gestures been transmitted to us as well as his words. But we only have the body o f the speech, not its soul, and we can only judge, on the basis o f our experience and given our limitations, what it might have been. A young orator must be very confident who appears in public with his text prepared and imagines that the tones and gestures that must accompany and animate his words will be available with the amount of force and eloquence that his thoughts require. Everything that can be good or bad requires rules and, however fortunate nature m aybe, it always needs the assistance of art if it is to be perfect: nihil credimus esse perfectum, nisi ubi natura cura juvetur [“we cannot hope to attain perfection unless nature is assisted by study.” Quintilian, Institutio Oratorio, 11.3.11],

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WHERE THE PRINCIPLE OF IMITATION IS VERIFIED

Today, poetry and dance are separate arts and declamation, abandoned* to itself, is no longer an art. Music proper is reduced to tones: it is the

science o f sounds. However, only the artists were separated— not the arts themselves. They are always intimately connected with each other so here we will discuss music and dance without separating them. The mutual compari­ son of one with the other will assist us in better understanding them. They will cast light on each other in this work just as they delight on the stage.1256

125 This seems to be a paraphrase of a passage from Charles Rollin: “The music of the ancients was a science of m uch greater extent than our music.” Oeuvres completes de Rollin (Paris: 1837), vol. 3, p. 237. Jean-Rémy Mantion, in his edition of Les Beaux-arts réduits à un même principe (Paris: Aux amateurs de livres, 1989), p. 260, n. 118, mistakenly attributes this passage to Dubos. 126 «The art 0 f deCorum in voices and movements.” I have been unable to definitively trace the origin of this quotation.

Chapter One Gestures and tones of voice are the keys to understanding music and dance Humans have three ways to express their ideas and feelings: speech, tone o f voice, and gesture. We understand by ‘gestures’ the movements and attitudes of the body. Gestus, said Cicero, est conformatio quaedam et figura totius oris et corporis.127 I have mentioned speech first because it is the first to come to mind and people ordinarily pay m ost attention to it. However, gestures and tones o f voice have several advantages. They are natural means o f expression and we have recourse to them when words fail us. They are more widely understood. They are a universal language that can accom ­ pany us to the ends of the earth and make us intelligible to the m ost barbarous nations, and even to animals. Finally, they are especially suited to the expression o f emotion. Speech can instruct and convince us; it is the vehicle of reason. But tone of voice and gesture are the vehicles of the heart. They move us, win us over, and persuade us. Speech only expresses passions by means of the ideas with which feelings are associated and by means of rational thought.* Tone of voice and gesture reach the heart

* W ords can express passions by naming them. W e say, 1 love you’ and Ί hate you.’ But if we do not join to these words an appropriate tone of voice or gesture, we express an idea rather than a feeling. In contrast, a movement or a look openly displays the emotion itself. If we recite the imprecations of Camille [from Corneille’s Horace] coldly, without expression, and without any gestures, the heart will remain untouched. Or, if we are moved, this will be because we imagine the tones of voice and gestures that should accompany these words in a furious person. Affectus omnes languesant necesse est, nisi voce, vultu, totius prope habitu corporis inardescunt. [“All emotional appeals will inevitably fall flat, unless they are given the fire that voice, look, and the whole carriage of the body can give them.” Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 11.3.2. The quotation has been corrected here.] 127 “Bearing is a certain configuration and form of the whole face and body.” Adapted from Cicero, De Oratore, 1.114.

130

WHERE THE PRINCIPLE OF IMITATION IS VERIFIED

directly and not via a detour. In short, speech is a conventional language which people have m ade in order to communicate their thoughts more distinctly. Gestures and tones o f voice are like a purely natural lexicon. They contain a language that we have known since birth and which we use to express everything related to our needs and the conservation of our existence. It is also vivid, concise, and energetic. There is no better basis for the arts, which aim to move the soul, than a language whose expressions are those o f humanity as a whole rather than those of [individual] men. Speech, gesture, and tone of voice can be used in three ways, each of which corresponds to one of the types of art that we have identified.* In the first way, they describe ordinary nature and serve our needs. They provide an unadorned portrait o f our thoughts and feelings. Ordinary conversations are, or ought to be, like this. The second way o f using speech, gesture, and tone of voice polishes nature by means o f art. Here, in order to add pleasure to utility, we select with some care, but with restraint and moderation, the m ost appropriate and pleasing words, tones, and gestures. This is oration and elevated narration. W hen they are used in the third way, we only have pleasure in mind. The three modes of expression have not only all of the natural grace and force, but also all of the perfection that art can add. By this I mean rhythm, emotion, modulation, and harmony. W e then have poetry, music and dance, the m ost perfect forms o f speech, tones of voice, and gestures.^

* Part One, Chapter One. t It follows from this that, in the fine arts, everything should be as perfect as possible. The tones and gestures should be regulated, just as the words are, and notated by the composer. The ancients had arrived at exactly this conclusion and it was a rule that governed their artistic practice. See the learned essay by the Abbott [Jean] Vatry [(1 6 9 7 -1 7 6 9 ), professor in the College Royal de Paris] in M émoires de l’Academié des inscriptions et belle-lettres, vol. 8. Among us, however, habit and prejudice are opposed to this rule. I say prejudice, because realism would not suffer from the application of this rule since, on the one hand, belle nature requires not only a perfect story but also language and diction that have every possible beauty, given the standing of the characters and their situations. And because, on the other hand, declamatory music and dance take on the very character and expressiveness o f natural declamation. Rhythm destroys nothing. It only regulates the unregulated while leaving it as it was beforehand. Our m ost beautiful musical passages are founded on natural declamation. W hen Lully composed his operas he some­ times asked La Chammelé [a celebrated seventeenth-century French actress] to declaim the words of the libretto. He quickly recorded their tones and then brought them under the rules of composition.

GESTURES AND TONES OF VOICE

131

From this I conclude (1) that the principal goal of music and dance must be imitation o f feelings or emotions while the main goal o f poetry is imitation of actions. However, since emotions and actions are nearly always united in nature, they should also be found together in the arts. There is this difference between poetry, on the one hand, and music and dance, on the other: in the former, emotions will be employed as a means or motive which prepares o r produces the story; in the latter, the story will be only a sort of canvas designed to carry, sustain, convey, and motivate the various passions that the artist wants to express. I also conclude (2) that if tone of voice and gestures had referents before they were regulated by art, these were preserved in music and dance, just as words have the same referents when used in poetry. Consequently, all o f music and dance must have meaning. Finally, I conclude (3) that everything that art adds to tones of voice and gestures must contribute to enhancing this meaning and rendering the expression of this meaning more energetic. Let us elaborate on these three conclusions in the following chapters.128

128 As noted in the Introduction, Batteux’s view that the expressiveness o f music is derived from its resemblance to human (vocal and non-vocal) expressive behaviour/was common in the eighteenth century. Dubos m ay have influenced Batteux’s views on this matter.

Chapter Two The emotions are the principal subject of music and dance Action and emotion are nearly always united and mingled together in everything human. They mutually herald and produce each other. They must, therefore, be nearly always found together in the arts. W hen artists present an action, it should be animated by some emotion. Similarly, when they present emotions, they should underlie some action. There is no need to prove this by means o f examples. However, each art employs specific means of expression that suit it to the expression o f certain parts of nature rather than others. So each art should address those parts of nature to which its means of expression are best adapted. Poetry’s means o f expression is speech, which is the language employed by the mind. Music and dance have for their means of expression, respectively, tones o f voice and bodily movements, and these means of expression are always suited to feelings. The best poets have always devoted themselves to actions and speech, the best musicians to feelings and emotions. If these parts o f nature are insep­ arable from each other, they must be treated together. Either emotions are subordinated to actions, or actions to emotions, depending on the means of expression which is predominant in the genre in which the artist works. Thus we see that in m ost tragedies made to be set to music the action is not the m ost interesting part. Rather, we are most interested by the emotions that arise out of the situations to which the actions give rise. In contrast, in other tragedies, the striking and astonishing exploits of the hero are m ost interesting. Features strewn about the work, unconnected to these exploits, are foreign to the work or misplaced beauties.

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From this it follows that pure narrative, concepts, and images are ill suited to music. Consequently, long recitations, expositions of some subject, transitions, metaphors, and witticisms, in short all products of reflection and recollection, resist musical expression. In contrast, the expression of emotion seems by its very nature to lend itself to musical treatment. The music is half-formed in the words that express some emotion. It takes only a little art to turn the words into music, particularly when they express a naïve or pure emotion that flows from the heart. For the heart also has its philosophy. But if the emotion is studied or disingenuous, music can no longer represent it or only partly represent it. The emotion becomes obscure and equivocal. Its expression is feeble, inapt, or twisted. From then on, the music is incapable of producing the pleasant sensation that cognoscendi and ordinary listeners experience, and must experience, when music speaks to them honestly in the language of nature. Dance is just the same as music. The artistic presentation necessarily languishes when the soul is not moved and the dance is only designed to instruct. In such a case, all the movements o f the dancer refer to almost nothing and they give no pleasure to those who see them. A gesture is only beautiful when it depicts grief, tenderness, pride, or, in a word, the soul. In logical arguments the expression o f emotion is ridiculous because it adds nothing to what is said. W e reason coolly and calmly. And if, in the course of placid reasoning, there is a little gesticu­ lation and a certain expressive tone, this is only to show that the thinker hopes that the truth he conveys persuades the heart as he tries to convince the mind. Feelings are always the source o f expressiveness. Let us now combine what we said about music drama in Part Three, Section One, Chapter Five and the remarks on the goal of lyric poetry in Chapter Ten of that section with what we have said about the natural goal of music and dance. It will not be difficult to infer from this an accurate idea of what music drama should be like. On the one hand, we will see the actions of the gods and, on the other, the emotions expressed. The actions of the gods contribute the elements o f the marvellous, dazzling the eyes, and occupying the imagination. The expression of emotion arouses emotions in the heart, firing and agitating it. In order to combine the two parts in a work of art, we must first choose the characters. These will be either gods, demi-gods, or, at least, men who have some supernatural characteristic that gives them an

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interesting link to the gods. Next we put the characters in situations where they experience vivid emotions. This is the foundation of music drama. A drama featuring mutual relationships between gods and men, once we enter into the imaginary world, is no more bizarre than narra­ tion by a muse in epic poetry. In fact, it is exactly the same thing. Epic is only an imitation of a heroic action and its natural or supernatural, real or realistic, causes. Similarly, music drama is only an imitation o f heroic emotions and their natural or supernatural, real or realistic, effects. In both we find gods who act like gods and heroic men who are protected or afflicted by the gods. The only difference is that epic is a narration of the action while the other genre is a dramatization of emotions. And if we examine the defects o f operas, we will see that they all come from two sources. Either the marvellous is poorly placed— that is to say, in char­ acters who do not have what it takes to pull it off—or the words do not lend themselves to convincing musical treatment. That is, the words do not sufficiently express emotion: they are the language o f the mind rather than that o f the heart.

Chapter Three All music and dance must have a referent and a meaning W e shall not list here musical works and dance movements that are only imitations, only an artful fabric of tones and poetical gestures that is realistic without being real. The emotions here are as fictional as the events in poetry. Both are the exclusive creation o f genius and taste. Nothing in them is real; everything is artifice. And if it sometimes happens that the musician or dancer actually has the feelings that he expresses, this is an accidental circumstance not at all essential to the art. It is a representation found in the flesh that should only be on a canvas. Art is made only to beguile us, as I believe we have made sufficiently clear. W e will speak here only of means of expression. In general, means of expression in themselves are neither natural nor artificial: they are only signs. Their qualities vary according to whether art or nature employs them, whether they are linked to reality or to fiction, and whether they are true or false, but their nature or essence remains unchanged. W ords are the same in conversation and in poetry. Shapes and colours are the same in natural objects and in paintings. Consequently, tones and gestures must be the same in emotions, whether real or fictional. A rt does n ot create means o f expression, nor does it destroy them. It only regulates, strengthens, and polishes them. And just as art cannot depart from nature in creating things, it cannot at all depart from it when expressing them. This is a principle. If I said that I don’t like a treatise that I don’t understand, m y confession would not be in the least unusual. But if I dared to say the same thing about a piece o f music, someone will ask m e whether I consider myself enough o f a connoisseur to assess the merits o f a good and carefully crafted composition. I dare to respond: yes, since listening to music is a m atter of feeling. I don’t claim to work out the

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pitches, or the relations that they have with each other or with our auditory system. I am not speaking here of oscillations, vibrations of strings, or ratios. I leave these investigations to learned theorists. These investigations are like grammatical or structural investigations o f a text. I can see the merit of these inquiries without entering into the details. Music speaks to me by its tones. This language seems natural to me. If I completely fail to understand it, art has corrupted nature rather than perfecting it.129 W e should judge a musical composition as we judge a picture. I see in a picture shapes and colours whose sense I grasp. It pleases and touches me. W hat would one say of a painter who was content to throw onto the canvas bold shapes and masses of vivid colours without the least resemblance to some known object? The same point applies to music. There is no difference and, if there is one, it strengthens m y case. The ear, we are told, is much m ore perceptive than the eye. Consequently, I am m ore capable of judging a musical composition than I am of judging a picture. I appeal to the composer himself [to support this point]: which are the parts of his works he is most proud of, which does he particularly enjoy, and to which does he return with a secret pleasure? Are they not those where the music is, so to say, speaking, where it has a precise meaning, free of obscurity and equivocation? W hy do artists choose certain sub­ jects and certain passions rather than others? Is it not because they are the easiest to express and those the expression of which audience m em ­ bers can m ost easily grasp?*

* W e have compared music with oratory. Here is what Cicero said about the latter: Quod hoc etiam mirabilius debet videri [in eloquentia], quia ceterarum artium studiafere reconditis atque abditis e fontibus hauriuntur, dicendi autem omnis ratio in medio posita communi quodam in usu atque in hominum ore et sermone versatur, ut in ceteris id maxime excellât, quod longissime sit ab imperitorum intellegentia sensuque disiunctum, in dicendo autem vitium vel maximum sit a vulgari genere orationis atque a consuetudine communis sensus abhorrere. [“And this should seem even more marvellous because the subjects of the other arts are derived as a rule from hidden and remote sources, while the whole art of oratory lies open to the view, and is concerned in some measure with the com mon practice, custom, and speech of mankind, so that, whereas in all other arts that is most excellent which is farthest removed from the understanding and mental capacity of the untrained, in oratory the very cardinal sin is to depart from the language of everyday life, and the usage approved by the sense of the community” De Oratore, 1.12.] The application [to music] is straightforward. 129 In his translation of this passage, Miller added the following note to clarify Batteux’s point: “A man of an ordinary ear is a judge whether a passion is expressed in proper sounds, and whether the melody of those sounds be more or less pleasing.”

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Thus the learned musician may, if he likes, congratulate himself on having, by means of a mathematical formula, reconciled tones that seemed completely incompatible. Nevertheless, if his composition means nothing, I would compare it to the bodily movements of orators which are merely signs of life. Or I would compare the composition to those poems that are only rhythmic noise or to those writers’ tricks that are only frivolous ornaments. The worst of all compositions are those that have absolutely no character. N o musical sound lacks a model in nature. This model ought to be the beginning o f musical expression, as a letter or a syllable is the beginning o f a word.* There are two sorts of music: the first imitates only inanimate sounds and noises.130 This sort of composition is to music as the landscape is to painting. The other sort o f music expresses animate sounds that are associated with emotions. This music is a portrait o f a persona. The musician is not m ore unconstrained than the painter. All of his works are constantly subject to comparison to nature. If he depicts a storm, a stream, or a zephyr, the sounds are in nature and he can only take them from there. If he depicts something imaginary that has never existed, such as the bellowing of the earth [as Pluto arises from the underworld]131 or the quivering of a ghost that rises from its grave, he emulates the poet: Aut fam am sequere, aut sibi convenientia finge .132 There are sounds in nature that correspond to the composer’s idea, if it is musical. W hen the composer finds them, he will immediately recognize them. It’s a fact: when the composer discovers them, he seems to recognize them, though he has never seen them before. However rich nature is for musicians, if we cannot understand the meaning of the

* This is equally true of a simple song and polyphony. They must both have a meaning and a reference. There is, however, this difference: a simple song is like a speech addressed to ordinary people. No special learning is required to understand it. On the other hand, polyphony requires a sort of musical erudition, or ears that are trained and practised. It is like a lecture addressed to the learned. It presupposes that listeners have certain acquired abilities without which they are unable to judge the music’s merits. It is an open question whether a discourse that is only for the learned can be truly eloquent. 130 Batteux has in mind music that imitates sounds such as church bells, birdsong, wind, storms, and so on. An example from Batteux’s time is the imitation of a cuckoo in LouisClaude Daquin’s Le coucou from his Pièces de clavecin, Book Three (1735). 131 Batteux apparently alludes to an incident in Iliad 20. 132 “Either follow tradition, or invent consistently.” Horace, A rt o f Poetry, 119.

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expressions it contains, they will not be riches for us. They will be an unknown dialect and consequently useless. Music has meaning in instrumental music, where it lives a half-life. Add the other half o f its being and it becomes vocal music, where it becomes a picture of the human heart. Every feeling, Cicero remarked, has an appropriate tone and gesture which conveys it, just as every word has an associated idea: Omnis enim motus animi suum quendam a

natura habet vultum et sonum et gestum.133 The combination o f tones (or gestures) and words creates a type of well-ordered discourse. And if there are passages that puzzle me, since they are poorly prepared by preceding passages or poorly developed by following ones, or if there are distracting or discordant passages, I cannot be satisfied. It is true, someone might say, that there are some emotions that we recognize in a piece o f music. Love, joy, and sadness are examples. But for each readily identifiable expressive passage, there are a thousand others where we cannot say what is expressed. I admit that we cannot name the emotion, but does it follow that it is not there? It is enough that we feel the emotion. It is n ot necessary that we name it. The heart has an insight independent of words and when it is moved, it understands everything. Moreover, just as there are huge matters that cannot be encompassed in words, so there are subtle matters that cannot be captured in words. Feelings in particular are found in this latter category. Let us conclude then that music, no m atter what careful calculation goes into the selection of notes and no m atter how mathematically perfect the intervals, m ay have no meaning. In this case, we can compare it to a prism that presents lovely colours, but is no picture. It would be like a chrom atic harpsichord that offers us colours and series o f colours. It would amuse the eyes, perhaps, but bore the mind.

133 “For every state of m ind has its own particular facial expression and voice and bearing.” Cicero, De Oratore, 3.216.

Chapter Four The expressive qualities that music and dance must have Certain natural qualities make tones and gestures, considered in them ­ selves expressive. There are other qualities that a rt adds to enhance and embellish the expressiveness. Here we will consider both types of quality. Since musical sounds and dance gestures have a meaning, just as the words do in poetry, the expressive elements o f music and dance m ust have natural qualities similar to those in oratory. Everything that will be said here must apply equally to music, dance, and oratory. All expression must be adapted to the matter expressed just as clothes must be fitted to a body. Just as poetry and fiction must be characterized by unity and variety, so m ust expression [in music and dance j have these qualities above all. The fundamental character of expression should be adapted to the subject matter. This determines whether the style is grand or simple, gentle or forceful. If music or dance takes joy as its subject, all of the modulations and the movements m ust take on a happy aspect. If the words and melodies are developed, changed, and harmonized with each other, this will always be without altering their essence, which they have in com m on. This is unity.* However, emotions never occur in isolation. W hen one emotion is dominant, others, in a m anner of speaking, are under its orders to attract or repel the objects that it favours or disap­ proves of. Similarly, the composer can find means of variation in the

* Our musicians often sacrifice the general mood, the expressive quality that should be extended throughout a piece of music, to subsidiary ideas that are nearly irrelevant to the main subject matter. They pause to depict a stream, a zephyr, or some other item that can be depicted in music. All of these particular expressive elements m ust be relevant to the subject. If they have the appropriate character, they must be based, so to speak, in the general affect that is expressed.

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unity of his subject. He can present, in turn, love, hate, fear, sadness, and hope. He imitates the orator, who employs all of the figures of speech and varieties of expression available to his art without altering the general tone of his style. Here, dignity reigns, because some serious moral, political, or legal point is under consideration. There, pleasantness radi­ ates because the subject is a landscape and not some heroic event. W hat would we say about an oration whose first part would sound good when delivered by a magistrate whereas the other half is suited to a servant in a farce? Moreover, a general tone of expression m ay be called a style o f music or dance. There are also other qualities that contribute to the particular expressiveness of a work. (1) Clarity is the prim ary virtue: Prima virtus perspicuitas.134 If there is a beautiful building in some valley, but it is invisible in the dark, what significance does it have for me? W e do not expect that each and every element of a work has a meaning, but if it is not complete itself, each phrase, word, or syllable must contribute to the meaning o f a poem. Similarly, in music, each note, each modulation, and each reprise must lead us to a feeling or bring it to us. (2) Expressiveness must be perfectly calculated. The expression of feeling is like choosing colours. A half-shade off, and their nature is changed or made uncertain. (3) Expressiveness should be lively and, often, fine and delicate. Everyone is familiar with emotion up to a certain point. An artist who depicts only what everyone knows will scarcely deserve the merit due to a historian or a servile imitator. It is necessary for an artist to go farther if he is looking for belle nature. Music and dance, like painting, capture beauties that artists call fleeting and transitory: finely drawn features, sighs, and murmurs that betray depths of emotion, an inclination o f the head: these are the features that engage, excite, and revive the mind. (4) Expressiveness should be assured and natural. Everything that seems laboured annoys and tires us. Audience members identify

134 “Clarity is the primary virtue.” Adapted from Quintilian, Institutio Oratorio, 8.2.22.

THE EXPRESSIVE QUALITIES OF MUSIC AND DANCE I 4 I with the character who speaks or acts and they cannot be indif­ ferent to his difficulties and suffering. (5) Finally, expression must be novel, especially in music. There is no other art in which taste is m ore demanding and hard to please:

Judicium aurium superbissimum.135 W ithout doubt, the explan­ ation for this is that it is easy for us to form an impression of song:

Natura ad numéros ducimur.136 Since the ear powerfully transmits to the mind the affect [expressed in a piece of music], a second hearing is almost useless and leaves the m ind passive and indiffer­ ent. Consequently, it is necessary constantly to vary key, tempo, and emotions expressed. Fortunately, the emotions expressed change when the others are varied. Since they [i.e., key, tempo, and emotion expressed] always have the same cause, the same emotion can take all sorts of forms. For example, it is a roaring lion, a purling stream, or a fire lit and fed by jealousy, fury, or despair. Such are the tones of voice and gestures considered in themselves and as similar to words in prose. Let us look now at what art can add to music and dance considered as arts. Tones and gestures [made by humans] are n ot as free in the arts as they are in nature. In the latter, the only rules are provided by instinct and these rules are rather flexible. This instinct by itself directs, varies, strengthens, or weakens at will expressive tones and gestures. But in the arts, there are strict rules, and fixed boundaries that the artist is not allowed to cross. Everything is regulated (1) by rhythm, which fixes the relative duration of each note and each gesture; (2) by tempo, which quickens or slows the duration of each note or gesture without increasing their number or changing the rhythm; (3) by melody, which unites notes and gestures and forms them into a series; and (4) finally, by harmony, which regulates the intervals when several parts are played at once. W e should not conclude that these rules can destroy or alter the natural meaning of notes and gestures. The rules only strengthen natural m ean­ ing by polishing the notes and gestures. The rules augment their energy

135 “The most proud judgement of the ears.” Adapted from Cicero, The Orator, 44.150. 136 “By nature we are led to rhythm.” Adapted from Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 9.4.10.

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by adding charms: Cur ergo vires ipsas specie solviputent, quando nec ulla

res sine arte satis v aleat.. Rhythm, tempo, melody, and harmony can regulate words, notes, and gestures equally well. That is to say, they apply to poetry, dance, and music. W e have already proved that they apply to poetry.^ They apply to dance whether there is only one dancer or several. The rhythm is found in the steps, tempo in the slowness or quickness, the melody in the march or continuity of the steps, and harmony in the coordination o f these parts with the accompanying instrument and, in particular, the coord­ ination of the dancers with each other. In dance we find solos, duos, and ensemble pieces, reprises, repeats, and ritornellos. These have the same rules as concerted music. Rhythm and tempo give life, we may say, to a musical composition. By these, the musician imitates the progression and movement o f natural sounds and gives to each note the duration that enables it to enter into the regulated structure o f a musical work. This process is parallel to the one in which words are arranged and measured in order to be included in a poem. Next, melody places each sound in its place and appropriate context. It unites, separates, or reconciles them according to the nature of the object that the musician proposes to imitate. The stream murmurs, thunder rumbles, and the butterfly flits. Some emotions are expressed in a sigh, some explode, and others make us tremble. Music, in order to take all o f these forms, appropriately varies notes, intervals, and modulations. It even carefully employs dissonance. Since dissonances are found in nature every bit as m uch as other sounds, they have the same right to be included in music. Dissonance does not merely provide seasoning and salt to music. It also contributes in a particular way to the character of musical expression. Nothing is as uneven as the progress of the emotions: love, anger, and discord. Often, in order to express these emotions, the voice becomes gruff and suddenly discordant. If art does not slightly soften the disagreeable elements o f nature, the truth of the expressiveness compensates for its harshness. The composer should use dissonance with caution, restraint, and intelligence.*

* Quintilian [“W hy then should it be thought that polish is inevitably prejudicial to vigour, when the truth is that nothing can attain its full strength without the assistance of art, and that art is always productive of beauty?” Institutio Oratoria, 9.4.7-8]. * Part Two, Chapter Three.

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Finally, harm ony contributes to musical expression. Every musical tone has a three-fold nature: within itself is found its fifth and its major third.137 This is the opinion o f Descartes,138 M ersenne,139 Sau­ veur,140 and Rameau,141 who has based his new system o f music on it. From this it follows that even a simple cry of joy in nature contains the foundations of tonal harmony. It is like a ray of light that, refracted by a prism, will display all of the colours o f which even the m ost glorious painting can be composed. If you like, decompose sound in the same manner. You will find that all of the different tones harmonize with each other.142 Follow this process throughout an apparently simple tune and you will find the tune in a fashion multiplied and varied by itself. There will be upper and lower parts that are nothing other than elements of the original song. These elements are developed into separate parts to enhance the original expressiveness. The various parts, which mutually accompany each other, resemble gestures, tones, and words, united in an oration. Or, if you like, they resemble the coordinated movements of feet, arms, and the head in dance. The expressive elements are different, but they have the same referent and the same meaning. Thus if the original tune is expressive o f something in imitated nature, the upper and lower parts only multiply this expressiveness. These parts strengthen and repeat the characteristics o f the original melody, making the image more vivid and, consequently, the imitation m ore perfect.

137 Batteux is referring to the overtone series of partial harmonics. As a string (or column of air) vibrates, it creates a note (the fundamental frequency). The halves of the string also vibrate, sounding a note an octave above the fundamental frequency. This is the first overtone or partial harmonic. The thirds of the string also vibrate, sounding the second overtone, a note a fifth above the first overtone. And so on. W hen placed in staff notation, the first three partial harmonics are the unison, the fifth, and the major third. 138 René Descartes (1 5 9 6 -1 6 5 0 ), French philosopher best known for his writings on epistemology and metaphysics, was the author of Musicae Compendium (1618). 139 Marin Mersenne (1 5 8 8 -1 6 4 8 ), French philosopher, mathematician, and music the­ orist, was the author of L ’Harmonie universelle (1637). 140 Joseph Sauveur (1 6 5 3 -1 7 1 6 ), French physicist and mathematician. Sauveur did pioneering work in acoustics and was the author, with Étienne Loulié, of Treatise on Musical Theory (1697). 141 Jean-Philippe Rameau (1 6 8 3 -1 7 6 4 ), music theorist and one of the great composers of the baroque era. Rameau’s Treatise on Harmony (1722) was an important contribution to music theory. It was one of the earliest books to describe the principles of tonal harmony in major and minor modes. 142 N ot strictly speaking true, but the first several overtones are considered to be consonant with the fundamental frequency.

Chapter Five On the union of the fine arts Poetry, music, and dance are sometimes separated in accordance with the tastes and preferences of individual people. However, nature has established principles that give the arts a unity and a com m on end. This end is to convey the ideas and feelings of the artist to the minds and hearts of those with whom he wants to communicate. These three arts are never more beguiling than when they are united. Cum valeant

multum verba per se, et vox propriam vim adiiciat rebus, et gestus motusque significet aliquid, profecto perfectum quiddam fieri, cum i4 a omnia coierunt, necesse est. Thus when artists separate these three arts in order to cultivate and polish each of them with more care, they should never lose sight of nature’s prim ary rule or think that the arts can be completely separated from each other. They must be united. Nature demands it and taste requires it. But how, and under what conditions? This is the topic, complete with section headings, for an entire book. W hen the various arts unite to treat the same subject, the situation is similar to the one in which a single art treats a subject with several parts. W hen one art addresses a complex subject, the resulting work must have a focus of attention or a point o f reference for even the most distant points. W hen painters and poets represent an event, they include the principal character, whom they call the hero p ar excellence. This hero is placed in the clearest light. He animates the painting and everything revolves around him. W hat a multitude of warriors in the Iliad! Diomedes, Odysseus, Ajax, and H ector play different roles, but they are all143

143 “Since words in themselves count for much and the voice adds a force of its own to the matter of which it speaks, while gesture and motion are full of significance, we may be sure of finding something like perfection when all these qualities are combined.” Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 11.3.9. Batteux gives the source as Book 10.

ON THE UNION OF THE FINE ARTS 145 related to Achilles. They are steps that the poet has prepared in order to raise our ideas until they comprehend the sublime valour of his principal hero. The difference between Achilles and everyone else would have been less apparent if the range o f heroes did not draw attention to it. Our conception of Achilles would be less grand and m ore imperfect without comparison to other heroes. W hen the arts work in concert they must be like the heroes in the

Iliad. A single art must excel and the others should play a supporting role. If poetry provides a drama, music and dance* appear in conjunction with it. But they do so only to enhance the value o f the play, to assist in the forceful presentation of the ideas and feelings contained in the verse. The supporting arts will certainly not provide grand and studied music or formal and rhythmic gestures that would obscure the poetry and steal part of the audience’s attention. Rather, the poetry will always be delivered with a simple inflexion that is responsive only to the needs o f the words. A completely natural movement of the body, which appears to take nothing from art, will be employed. If music is the centre of attention, it alone has the right to display its attractions. The stage belongs to it. Poetry plays a supporting role and dance is also subservient. Poetry no longer provides splendid and mag­ nificent verse, bold descriptions, or striking images. Rather, the poetry is simple and naïve. The words flow with softness and ease, in a casual manner. The reason for this is that the words should follow the music, not the other way around. The words in this case, although written before the music, are only like impetus added to the musical expression in order to render its meaning more perspicuous and intelligible. W e should judge the poetry of Quinault144 from this point of view. If he is charged with writing weak poetry, Lully vindicates him. The m ost beautiful verse is not best suited to being set to music. Rather, the m ost touching verse is. Ask a composer which of these two fragments of Racine is the easiest to set to music. First this one: Quel carnage de touts parts! On égorge à la fois les enfants, les vieillards;

* ‘Dance’ here only means the art of gesture, taken in its m ost extended sense [and so includes acting], 144 Philippe Quinault (1 6 3 5 -8 8 ), French playwright and librettist. He wrote many libretti for the operas of Lully.

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Et la soeur, et le frère; Et la fille, et la mere; Le fils dam les bras de son père. Que de corps entassés! Que de membres épars, Privés de sepulture!145

Here is the other, which follows immediately in the same scene: Hélas! si jeune encore, Par quel crime ai-je pu mériter mon malheur? Ma vie à peine a commencé d ’éclore. Je tomberai comme une fleur Qui n ’a vu qu’une aurore. Hélas! si jeune encore, Par quel crime ai-je p u mériter mon malheur?146

Do you need to be a composer to feel the difference? Dance is even m ore modest than poetry [in works o f m usic]. Poetry is at least rhythmic, but gesture almost does less for music than it does for drama. If dance sometimes has a larger impact, this is because music is m ore passionate than poetry. Consequently, music does more to inspire dance. As we have noted, gesture and tone o f voice are particularly suited to the expression of feeling. Finally, if dance is the focus of attention, music must not be so brilliant that it detracts from the dancing. It should only lend a hand to emphasize the movement and its character. It is necessary that the concertm aster

[violon ] and the dancer work together. Though the concertm aster leads, 145

W hat carnage everywhere! Children and old people die at the same time, And sister and brother, And daughter and mother, The son in the arms o f his father. W hat crowded bodies! W hat scattered limbs Deprived of a grave! Esther, 1.5.316-22. Batteux misquotes Racine; the passage is correct here. Alas, so young still, W hat crime have I committed to deserve m y unhappiness? My life has scarcely begun to blossom, I fall like a flower That has only seen one sunrise. Esther, 1.5.325-31.

ON THE UNION OF THE FINE ARTS

14 7

he is only an accompanist. The dancer has the right to set the tone. W hether he leads or follows, he always holds pride of place and m ust never be placed in the shade. The ear should be entertained only as much as necessary, in order that the eyes are not distracted. W e do not ordinarily combine speech with dance (narrowly defined so as to exclude acting). But this does not show that they cannot be combined. Everyone agrees that they were once united.147 People would dance while the voice chanted, as today they dance to an instru­ mental accompaniment. The spoken words had the same rhythm as the dance steps. Poetry, music, and dance present to us representations o f events and human emotions. But architecture, painting, and sculpture prepare the sets and scenery for the spectacle. They must do so in a manner that is sensitive to the social status o f the characters and to the nature of the subject being considered. The gods live in Olympus, kings in palaces, the ordinary citizen in his house, and the shepherd is seated in the shade o f trees. Architecture designs these settings and they are embellished with the assistance of painting and sculpture. The entire universe belongs to the fine arts. They can avail themselves of all of the variety of nature. But they must do so in an appropriate manner. Every residence must be suited to its inhabitant, his social status, his wealth, and his taste. This is the rule that should guide the arts in constructing and decorating sets. Ovid could not make the Palace of the Sun too grand,148 or Milton the Garden of Eden too delightful, but such a degree o f magnificence would be inappropriate even for a king because it is above his station in life:

Singula quaeque locum teneant sortita decentem.149

147 Batteux has in mind ancient Greek theatre. 148 A reference to Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2.1 ff: “The palace of the Sun towered up with raised columns, bright with glittering gold, and gleaming bronze like fire. Shining ivory crowned the roofs, and the twin doors radiated light from polished silver. . . ” 149 “Let each thing keep to the proper, allotted place.” Horace, Art o f Poetry, 92. The quotation is corrected here.

Index Aesop, 98 A esthetic cognitivism, xv, xxxviii ff. Allegory, 102 A nacreon, 58, 78 Apelles, 36 A rchitecture, 3, 22 ff. Ariosto, Ludovico, 100 Aristarchus, 54 Aristotle, xxiv, lii, lvi ff, bdii, Ixvii, lxxviii f., 8, 11, 2 5 , 72, 77, 7 9, 107, 110 A rt of gesture: see D ance A rts, fine, defined, 2 0 ff A rts, fine, identified, 3 A rts, liberal, 4 A rts, m echanical, 3 f. B acon, Francis, 40 Bartoli, C osim o, lxi f. Baum garten, A lexander Gottlieb, xxxiii Beattie, James, x x x iv Beauty, x ix f f , xxvii, x x x v , 4 , 1 2 f., 1 6 ,2 3 , 4 0, 4 3, 4 7 , 56, 7 8 , 8 1, 94 ff, 9 9 , 103, 107, 110, 120, 122, 130, 133, 140 Belle nature, xix f f, xxv, xxix, x l f., lxxx, 4, 15 f„ 19 f., 24, 2 7 , 36, 39, 4 3 , 4 5, 51, 54, 55, 59, 6 5, 7 5 , 84, 102 £ , 109, 123, 126 Belvedere Torso, 42 Bion, 58, 114 Boileau-D espréaux, Nicolas, xxxvi, lxxix, 45 f., 56, 91 £, 121 f. Bossu, René Le, lxxviii, 70, 101 Bourdaloue, Louis, 127 Castelvetro, Lodovico, lxiii Catiline, 52 Christianity, 59 f., 100 Cicero, xvi, lix, lxxix, 12 f., 17, 3 7 , 46, 52, 54, 7 1, 85 ff, 112, 127, 129, 136, 138, 141 Claudian, 15 Cochlaeus, Johannes, lxi C om edy, 110 ff

Corneille, Pierre, 13, 16, 4 3 , 50, 54, 57, 80 ff, 86, 9 2 , 122 C osta, Felix da, lxv Dacier, A nne Le Févre, lxxviii D an ce, 6 ,1 9 , 127 f., 129 f., 135, 139 f f, 144 ff d’Aubignac (F ran ço is H edelin), Abbé, lxxviii David, 115 Davies, Stephen, xlvi D eclam ation, 127 D em osthenes, 127 D escartes, René, 143 Deshoulières, A ntoinette D u Ligier de la Garde, 114 D iderot, Denis, xvii, xx ix f. Dionysius o f Halicarnassus, 88 D ryden, John, lxiv Dubos, Jean-Baptiste, xxvi, xlv, 1, lxvi f., 131 Eliot, T.S., xlvii Eloquence, 3 , 2 2 f f Em otions, 132 f f, 135, 139 f. Em pedocles, 2 5

Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, xxviii f., 4 7 , 8 4 , 121 Enthusiasm , x x i, 15 ff, 71 f f , 106, 108 Epie, 98 ff Expression, 140 ff. Fables, 115 f f Fontenelle, B ern ard Le Bovier de, 8, 53,114 Gaurini, A lessandro, lxii Glarean (G lareanus), H einrich, lx f. Goldsmith, Oliver, 71 G oodm an, N elson, xl Goodness, 4 3 Gracyk, T heod ore, xxxiv

150

INDEX

H arris, James, xxvi f., lxvi H erder, Johann Gottfried, xxii, xxxiii Hesiod, 24 H om er, xvi, 4 3 , 50, 57, 7 0, 7 7 , 87, 98 f., 105, 145 H o race, xxv, xxxiv, lxv, bcvii, lxxix, 8 f., 14, 24, 37, 50, 52, 70 fif., 7 4 , 77 f., 8 2, 85 f., 88, 9 5 , 1 0 0 ,1 1 0 , 1 1 2 ,1 1 6 ,1 2 2 f., 1 3 7 ,1 4 7 H um e, David, x x x iv f. H utcheson, Francis, xxvii f., xlv Im agination, 33 Im itation, principle of, lxxix, 4 , 6 ,1 1 , 2 7 , 6 5, 69, 76, 9 8 , 119 Juvenal, 57 Karnes, Lord (H enry H o m e ), li K ant, Im m anuel, xxxi f. Kivy, Peter, xliv, xlvi ff. Kristeller, Paul Oskar, xlix ff., liv ff., lxvi ff. La Bruyère, Jean de, 111 La Cham m elé, xlvi, 130 La Fontaine, Jean de, 7 , 1 8 , 8 6 , 9 1 , 1 1 5 fif. L a M othe Le Veyer, Fran çois de, 94 Le Brun, Charles, 13, 43 Le Sage, Alain René, 4 6 Lessing, G otthold Ephraim , xx x i Livy, 13, 7 0, 83 Locke, John, 5 Lowinsky, Edw ard E., lx Lully, Jean-Baptiste, xlvi, 5 2 , 111, 130, 145 Lyric poetry, 1 0 5 ,1 1 9 fif. M ahler, Gustav, xlvii M alherbe, François de, 9 3, 122 M aritanus Capella, lix M arvellous, the, 98 ff., 133 M axim us o f Tyre, 13 M endelssohn, M oses, x x x ii f. M ersenne, M arin, 143 M idas, 77 M iller, John, lxix, 136 M ilton, John, 15, 5 0 ,1 0 0 , 147 M odern system o f the arts, xlix fif. M olière, xl, 6, 12, 78, 8 6 , 111 M orellet, A ndré, xlv, xlvii f.

M oschus, 58, 114 Moses, 120 M usic, xliii ff., 6 ,1 9 , 5 2 ,1 2 7 f., 129 f., 132 fif., 135 fif., 139 fif., 144 fif. N icander, 25 Nicole, Pierre, 40 d’Olivet, Pierre-Joseph Thoulier, xvi, xviii, 9 0, 92 f. Opera, 1 0 6 ,1 3 2 ,1 3 4 Ovid, 8 6 , 104, 147 Painting, 6, 19, 125 f. Parm enides, 25 Pastoral poetry, 113 f. Pericles, 71 Perseus, 63 Petronius, 104 Phidias, 107 Pindar, 4 2 , 1 1 5 ,1 2 2 Piron, Alexis de, 119 Plato, xxiv , lii fif., lxvii, 8 , 1 3 , 1 7 , 50, 54 Plautus, 17 Pliny th e Elder, 38 Pliny th e Younger, 3 8 , 72 Plutarch, 8 ,1 7 , 2 5 , 59 Poetical harm ony, 8 5 fif. Poetical style, 8 4 fif. Poetry, 1, 6, 9 f., 19, 2 4 , 69 ff., 7 4 £ , 130, 1 4 4 fif. Poetry, defined, lxxvii fif., 19 Pope, A lexander, xxxvi, lxiv Pontanus, Jacobus, 1 Porter, Jam es L, li £ , lvi fif. Prose, 2 4 Q uarrel o f the A ncients and M oderns, xxxvii fif., 96 f. Quinault, Philippe, 145 Quintilian, 52, 88, 1 2 8 ,1 2 9 , 140 fif., 144 Racan, H onorât de Bueil, Seigneur de, 113 Racine, Jean, 1 3 ,1 6 ,4 3 , 57, 80, 91 £ , 108, 123, 145 f. Racine, Louis, 71 Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 143 Raphael, 42 f. Rapin, René, 110

INDEX 151 Reid, Thom as, xlv R ém ond de Saint-M ard, Toussaint, lxvi, 8 ,1 1 6 Rollin, Charles, lxv f„ lxxviii, 58 Ronsard, Pierre de, 15 Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste, 18, 8 6 , 9 3 f., 1 1 9 ,1 2 1 ff. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, xxiii, xxviii, xlviii Rubens, P eter Paul, 4 2 Rules o f criticism , lxxvii, 4 9, 75 ff.

T asso, Torquato, 100 f. T aste, xxii f., lxxv, lxxx, 2 7 , 2 9 if., 3 2 ff., 3 5 ff., 3 9 ,4 5 , 4 9 , 51, 53, 5 5 , 58 f., 61, 6 4 , 79, 141 Terence, 4 3 , 4 6 , 111 Theocritus, 5 2 , 5 3 , 105, 114 Theognis, 25 Tragedy, 106 ff., 132 T ru th , 1, 13, 3 0 , 3 2 ,4 7 , 102 f., 120, 123, 133 Twining, T h om as, xlix

Saisselin, R.G., xv, x x x i Sallust, 52 Saveur, Joseph, 143 Schlegel, Johann Adolf, x x x , Ixxi Sculpture, 6 , 1 9 Segrais, Jean Régnault de, 8 6 ,1 1 4 Seneca the Elder, 38 Seneca th e Younger, 6, 3 8 ,1 0 8 Shiner, Larry, li Sidney, Sir Philip, lxiii Smith, M arshall, Ixiv f. Socrates, 72 Sophocles, 56 Statius, 15 Stoics, 57 Subjectivism, xxii f. Sulzer, Johann Georg, xlv

V asari, Giorgio, 1, lix, lxii f. V atry, Jean, 130 V ida, M arco G irolam o, 2 4 , 8 5 ff. Virgil, xxxiv, 6 , 16, 2 4 , 37, 4 3 , 52, 53, 57, 7 7 £, 82, 8 6 £ , 9 1 , 94, 9 6 , 9 8 £ , 104 f. V irtue, xxiii, x x x ix , xlii, lxxv, lxxviii, 4 2 , 5 8, 61, 6 3, 7 7 , 8 0 V oltaire, 102 Vossius, G erardus, 88 W inckelm ann, Johann Joachim , 4 2 X enop hon, 5 4 Y oun g, Edw ard, xxii, xxxv, xxxvii Zeuxis, 12, 16