The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
and unfruitful in art. The comprehended Idea, on the contrary, is the true and only source of every work of art. In its powerful originality it is only derived from life itself, from nature, from the world, and that only by the true genius, or by him whose momentary inspiration reaches the point of genius. Genuine and immortal worits of art spring only from such direct apprehension.
Just because the Idea is and remains object of perception, the artist is not conscious in the abstract of the intention and aim of his work ; not a concept, but an Idea floats before his mind ; therefore he can give no justification of what he does. He works, as people say, from pure feeling, and unconsciously, indeed instinctively.
On the contrary, iinitators, mannerists, pecus, start, in art, from the poncept ;^^iey observe what pleases and affects us in true works of art ; understand it^”cTearly, fix it in a concept, and thus abstractly, and FEen imitate it, openly or disguisedly, with dexterity and intentionaily.
They suck their._ttOUrisliment, like parasite plants, from the works of others, and like polypi, thi^^ecome thie colour o^ their fopi We might carry comparison further, and say that they are like machines which mince fine and mingle together whatever is put into them, but can never digest it, so that the different constituent parts may always be found again if they are sought out and separated from the mixture ; the man of genius alone resembles the organised, assimilating, transforming and reproducing body.
For he is indeed educated and cultured by his predecessors and their works ; but he is really fructified only by life and the world directly, through the impression of what he perceives; therefore the highest culture never interferes with his originality. All imitators, all mannerists, apprehend in concepts the nature of representative works of art ; but concepts can never impart inner life to a work. The age, i.e., the dull multitude of every time, knows only concepts, and sticks to them, and therefore receives
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mannered works of art with ready and loud applause : but after a few years these works become insipid, because the spirit of the age, i.e, the prevailing concepts, in which alone they could take root, have changed. Only true works of art, which are drawn directly from nature and life, have eternal youth and enduring ,pjower,J[ike nature and life themselves. For they belong to no age, but to humanity, and as on that account they are coldly received by^their own age, to which they disdain to link themselves clos^, anSTBecausT indirectly and negatively they expose the existing errors, they are slowly and unwillingly recogni^ ; on the other hand, they cannot grow old, but appear to us ever fresh and new down to the latest ages. Then they are no longer exposed to neglect and ignorance. ?or theyare crowned and sanctioned by the praise of £Ee ^ew menjc^able of judging, who appear singly and"3Sfely in the^gQurse ^iye in their votes, 'whose slowly growing number constitutes the authority, which alone is th^udgnrent-seat when we appeal to posterity. It is these successively appearing individuals, for the mass of posterity will always be and remain just as perverse and dull as the mass of contemporaries always was and always is. We read the complaints of great men in every century about the customs of their age. They always sound as if they referred to our own age, for the race is always the same. At every time and in every art, mannerisms have taken the place of the spirit, which was always the possession of a few individuals, but mannerisms are just the old cast-off garments of the last manifestation of the spirit that existed and was recognised. From all this it appears that, as a rule, the praise of posterity can only be gained at the cost of the praise of one’s contemporaries, and vice versa}
§ 50* the aim of all art is the communication of the comprehended Idea, which through the mind of the artist
^ Apparent ra/ri, nantes in yurgite vasto
* Cf. Ch. xxxiv. of Supplement.
3o6 the world as idea. bk. Ill
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