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Saintsbury and Art for Art's Sake in England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The aesthetic movement in England (1870–1900) now seems remote, yet since no history repeats itself more faithfully than that of criticism, the historian of ideas may well inquire what relation the Art for Art's Sake movement has to the mental, moral, and social confusion of today, especially when one hears a reviewer warning us that John Crowe Ransom, like other formal aesthetic critics of today, “often sounds like an aesthete of the 'nineties.“
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References
Note 1 in page 243 H. J. Mueller, “The New Criticism in Poetry,” Southern Review (Spring, 1941), p. 811.
Note 2 in page 243 Irving Babbitt, “Are the English Critical?” Nation (N. Y.), xciv (March 21, 28, 1912), 282.
Note 3 in page 243 “George Saintsbury,” New Republic, lxxiii (February 8, 1933), 339.
Note 4 in page 243 Even the best of these—Louise Rosenblatt, L'Idée de l'art pour l'art en Angleterre, Bibliothèque de la revue de la littérature comparée, lxx (1931); Albert Farmer, Le Mouvement esthétique et décadent en Angleterre (1873–1900), Bibliothèque de la revue de la littérature comparée, lxxv (1931); and Rose Egan, The Genesis of the Art for Art's Sake Movement, Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, ii (1921–22) and v (1923–25)— barely mention Saintsbury.
Note 5 in page 243 “Dryden,” Nation (N. Y.), xxxii (May 12, 1881), 337–338.
Note 6 in page 244 “Miscellaneous Articles,” Spectator, lxix (July 16, 1892), 98–99. Cf. C. H. Hereford' “History of Elizabethan Literature,” Academy, xxxii (December 13, 1887), 364.
Note 7 in page 244 “An Encyclopedia of Literary Taste,” Bookman (London), xxvii (November, 1904), 85.
Note 8 in page 244 “An Atlas of Criticism,” Acad., lix (December 29, 1900), 639–640. Cf. reviews also of the History of Criticism: Sat. Rev., xcviii (October 8, 1904), 461–162; Independent, lii (March 21, 1901), 675; and Herbert Read, “George Saintsbury,” Spectator, cli (December 22, 1933), 938.
Note 9 in page 244 A Scrap Book, 114.
Note 10 in page 244 Albert Guérard, Art for Art's Sake (1936), xxxiii. Typically Walter Pater insisted that the aesthetic critic “has no need to trouble himself with the abstract question what Beauty is in itself.” (Studies in the History of the Renaissance [London, 1910], pp. viii–ix.)
Note 11 in page 244 The Later Nineteenth Century (1907), p. 72.
Note 12 in page 244 Cf. Rosenblatt, op. cit., pp. 8–9.
Note 13 in page 245 Charpentier (Paris, 1924), p. xxii. See also Gautier, Victor Hugo (Paris, n.d.), p. 103, and Pater's quotation from Flaubert on the sole end of art—“the beautiful”—“On Style,” Appreciations (London, 1910), p. 29.
Note 14 in page 245 Swinburne, Complete Works, xiii, 417, 422 (originally Spectator, September 6, 1862).
Note 15 in page 245 Ibid., 134–138, passim.
Note 16 in page 246 Collected Essays, ii, 221. See also, Second Scrap Book (1923), pp. 59–60.
Note 17 in page 246 Life of Swinburne (London, 1917), p. 134.
Note 18 in page 246 “Walter Pater,” Prefaces and Essays, p. 356.
Note 19 in page 246 Acad., iv, 242.
Note 20 in page 247 Ibid., 282. The quoted phrase is that of Victor La Prade, the editor of Lamartine.
Note 21 in page 247 Coll. Essays, ii, 200.
Note 22 in page 247 Hist, of Crit., ii, 520.
Note 23 in page 247 iii, 333n. Cf. also Scrap Book, 88. In Swinburne (Complete Works, xvi, 134) a remarkable parallel (too close to be ignored) occurs (in his Blake): “Strip the sentiments and re-clothe them in bad verse, what residue will be left of the slightest importance to art? Invert them, retaining the manner or the form (supposing this feasible, which it might be), and art has lost nothing. Save the shape and art will take care of the soul for you.“
Note 24 in page 248 Acad., v (January 24, 1874), 84.
Note 25 in page 248 Ibid., vi (October 10, 1874), 398.
Note 26 in page 248 Flaubert, Correspondance, 4 vols. (Paris, 1891–94), ii, 70 (1852).
Note 27 in page 248 Acad., vi (December 5, 1874), 599.
Note 28 in page 249 “Kinds of Criticism,” Essays in English Literature, first series (1890), p. xiv.
Note 29 in page 249 L'Artiste (December, 1856). Cf. Flaubert, op. cit., ii, 116; i, 156–157.
Note 30 in page 249 Scrap Book, pp. 85-86. Pater wrote in 1886: “If there is a weakness in Mr. Saintsbury's view, it is perhaps in a tendency to regard style a little too independently of matter.” Essays from ‘the Guardian‘ (London, 1910), p. 15.
Note 31 in page 250 Acad., v (June 13, 1874), 651.
Note 32 in page 250 Ibid.
Note 33 in page 250 Acad., viii (July 3, 1875), 5.
Note 34 in page 250 Rosenblatt, op. cit., p. 164.
Note 35 in page 250 Acad., viii, 5. Here Saintsbury first refers to Pater's Studies. He finds them valuable as literature and as criticism but says nothing of their expression of the aesthetic credo.
Note 36 in page 251 “Baudelaire” (1875), Coll. Essays, iv, 2; also vi. See references to Baudelaire in earlier reviews: Acad., v (January 24, 1874), 84; Acad., vi (July 4, 1874), 8; Acad., vi (October 10, 1874), 399.
Note 37 in page 251 “Baudelaire,” Coll. Essays, iv, 55. Cf. Saintsbury's praise of Ste. Beuve (Acad., vii [April 17, 1875], 392) as an impressionist who holds a mirror to his subject (that of a “cultivated mind“) and records the image.
Note 38 in page 251 Studies, p. ix.
Note 35 in page 251 iii, 551–552. On 545 he says, “I do not know any place setting forth that view of criticism which I myself hold more clearly than the preface to the Studies.“
Note 40 in page 251 Ibid., 265. For a full interpretation of Pater's method see 546–551. On 548 Saintsbury approves of “the moment of pleasure being taken as the unit and reference-integer of literary value.“
Note 41 in page 252 Ibid., 546–551, passim.
Note 42 in page 252 “Baudelaire,” Coll. Essays, iv, 2 ff., passim
Note 43 in page 253 Ibid., 26–28, passim.
Note 44 in page 253 “Gustave Flaubert” (1878), Coll. Essays, iv, 31.
Note 45 in page 253 “Théophile Gautier” (1878), Essays on French Novelists (London, 1891), p. 230.
Note 46 in page 253 “Modern English Prose” (1876), Coll. Essays, iii, 69, 71.
Note 47 in page 253 Ibid., 64, 83–85, passim.
Note 48 in page 253 Ibid., 73–74.
Note 49 in page 254 Ibid.
Note 50 in page 254 “On Style,” Appreciations, p. 18.
Note 51 in page 254 Mrs. Humphry Ward, A Writer's Recollections, i, 161.
Note 52 in page 254 Mrs. Mandell Creighton, The Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton (London, 1904), i, 46.
Note 53 in page 254 “Walter Pater” (Bookman, Aug., 1906), Prefaces and Essays, pp. 359–360.
Note 54 in page 254 Ibid., pp. 353–355, passim.
Note 55 in page 255 Quoted in Oliver Elton, “George Saintsbury,” Proceedings of the British Academy, xix (1933), 335.
Note 56 in page 255 Hist, of Crû., iii, 611.
Note 57 in page 255 Elton, op. cit., p. 335.
Note 58 in page 255 Yellow Book, i (1894), 119–124: A brief tale of two lovers of wine for whom the bouquet of fine vintages recalls earlier loves.
Note 59 in page 256 “Essays and Studies,” Bookman (New York), I (March, 1895), 113.
Note 60 in page 256 “Walter Pater,” Prefaces and Essays, p. 358. Here Saintsbury, admitting that the omission of the conclusion in 1877 relieved Pater of the charge of “dogged pose,” regrets that Pater failed to write a new conclusion to embody “that return to the religious influence of his earlier days which is acknowledged as having taken place, which is really foreshadowed in the original conclusion.“
Note 61 in page 256 Later Nineteenth Century, p. 72.
Note 62 in page 256 “The End of a Chapter,” Coll. Essays, iv, 280.
Note 63 in page 256 “Twenty-One Years,” T.L.S. (London), Jan. 4, 1923, 1. See Later Nineteenth Century. Saintsbury actually discusses the fin de siècle writers very little both because he gave up journalism and left London in 1895 and because of his antiquated notion that the literary historian should not treat living authors.
Note 64 in page 257 Eist. of Crû., i, 19.
Note 65 in page 257 Ibid., iii, 340.
Note 66 in page 257 C.H.E.L., xii, 341.
Note 67 in page 257 Matthew Arnold (London, 1899), p. 29.
Note 68 in page 257 History of Elizabethan Literature (London, 1886), p. 163. Cf. Nineteenth Century Literature (London, 1896), p. 240: “To speak of the best things in an original way, in a distinguished style, is the privilege of the elect in literature.“
Note 69 in page 257 Hist, of Cril., iii, 548. Here he calls Pater's distinction between good and great literature as a matter of subject “hedging.“
Note 70 in page 258 “Present State of the English Novel,” Coll. Essays, iii, 140.
Note 71 in page 258 Bist, of Crit., iii, 340. Cf. ibid., i, 19, and also i, 443, where he characterizes Dante (whose shade mvst protest) as a critic “recognizing the real and ultimate test of literary excellence as lying in the expression, not in the meaning.” The same emphasis occurs ibid., i, 127–146 (on Longinus); i, 94–101 (on Patrizzi); iii, 117–126 (on Joubert).
Note 72 in page 258 “Technique,” Dial (N. Y.), lxxx (April, 1926), 273. Cf. The Peace of the Augustans (1918), p. vii.
Note 78 in page 258 Scrap Book, pp. 115–117.
Note 74 in page 258 “The true and only test of literary greatness—the ‘transport,‘ the absorption of the reader,” Saintsbury speaks of frequently, though he finds that Longinus is the only critic beside himself who is satisfied with that alone (Bist, of Crit., i, 158). The belief that pleasure is the end of art is a longstanding principle in art criticism; Saintsbury's peculiarity lies in attaching so much importance to the moment of thrill or intoxication. “It is true that this intoxication is not regarded by all as a sure criterion . . . but I have known worse tests of poetry than this presence or absence of stimulation,” he said in his Edinburgh Inaugural Address in 1895. He has many descriptions for the experience, but all are primarily emotional and sensual: “the deeper and truer thrill,” “the quality of impassioning and exhilarating,” “The kind of stupor on the one hand, of enthusiastic flush on the other which is caused by the rarest things,” “the condition of enthusiasm in which the special defects of the matter are altogether lost sight of in the unsurpassed and dazzling excellence of the manner,” and “that immediate and magical effect on the senses of the mind—that direct touch of the poetic nerve—which is perhaps the best, if not the only criterion of poetry.“
Note 75 in page 259 Saintsbury, “A French Man of Letters,” Coll. Essays, iv, 293. Saintsbury's fullest discussion of this is his “Guy de Maupassant,” National Review, xxi (1893), 817–827.
Note 76 in page 259 Mandell Creighton in 1881 (Mrs. Creighton, op. cit., i, 222) wrote: “Saintsbury, as you know, is the literary dictator of minor poets and novelists: they bend before him and he scourges them at his will.” In 1896 Arthur Waugh (“Living Critics viii: George Saintsbury,” Bookman [London], x [Aug., 1896], 136) hails him as “the soundest most authoritative among our contemporaries.” In 1902 he is for one reviewer “the first of living critics.” (Critic, xl [Jan. 1], 54.) In 1904 he is described as holding “a high position of authority and influence, a position corresponding in some respects, academic or otherwise, to that held by his dogmatic compeer on the other side of the channel, M. Brunetière” (Bookman [London], xxvii, 84). In 1916 Robert Lynd speaks of Gosse and Saintsbury as “the two kings of Sparta among critics today.” (”Two English Critics,” Art of Letters, New York [1921], p. 178). Christopher Morley, in 1937, in the preface to the eleventh edition of Bartleit's Famous Quotations (p. xi) speaks of “the king of critics in our lifetime, the magnificent Saintsbury.“
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