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Chris Greger beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would
English 46C: Victorians and Moderns otherwise have. Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human
experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and
useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty, not in the most
Reading Selections for Unit 2: abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, to find, not a universal
Aestheticism formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that
special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.

Walter Pater "To see the object as in itself it really is," has been justly said to be the aim of
all true criticism whatever; and in aesthetic criticism the first step towards
Note: Walter Pater (1839-1894) lived, for the most part, a quiet life teaching seeing one's object as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really
classics at Brasenose College in Oxford. Between lectures, though, he was is, to discriminate it, to realise it distinctly. The objects with which aesthetic
writing and publishing essays which were, in a subtle way, beginning to re- criticism deals—music, poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human
align Victorian values. And sometimes not so subtle: one of his students, life—are indeed receptacles of so many powers or forces: they possess, like
Oscar Wilde, said of the scandalous collection of Essays Pater published in the products of nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or
1872 on the Renaissance: “It is my golden book; I never travel anywhere picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to ME? What
without it; but it is the very flower of decadence: the last trumpet should have effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and if so, what
sounded the moment it was written.” And later, while languishing in sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its presence, and
Wandsworth prison, it was one of 15 books he requested to keep with him, under its influence? The answers to these questions are the original facts with
referring to it as “that book which has had such a strange influence over my which the aesthetic critic has to do; and, as in the study of light, of morals, of
life.” number, one must realise such primary data for oneself, or not at all. And he
who experiences these impressions strongly, and drives directly at the
What was so influential about the book? What would cause most critics of discrimination and analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the
the day, as well as many of his peers at Oxford, to think of it as so poisonous abstract question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth or
and dangerous? What about it would cause a generation of his students and experience—metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical
acolytes to start dressing in mauve, wearing green carnations, and holding questions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or not, of
contrary views about most of Victorian England’s sacred values? no interest to him.

Read the Preface and Conclusion to The Renaissance below and decide for
The aesthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with which he has to do, all
yourself. The Conclusion, in particular, seemed to assert a particularly
works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as powers or
powerful hold on the imagination: for a long time it was not uncommon for
forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or less peculiar or
Oxford undergraduates would commit it to memory and recite it like some
unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to explain, analysing it and
kind of prayer, or mantra.
reducing it to its elements. To him, the picture, the landscape, the engaging
personality in life or in a book, La Gioconda, the hills of Carrara, Pico of
Preface to The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873) Mirandola, are valuable for their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a
wine, a gem; for the property each has of affecting one with a special, a
Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty unique, impression of pleasure. Our education becomes complete in
in the abstract, to express it in the most general terms, to find a universal proportion as our susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and
formula for it. The value of these attempts has most often been in the variety. And the function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, analyse, and
suggestive and penetrating things said by the way. Such discussions help us separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair
very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate personality in life or in a book, produces this special impression of beauty or
between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what
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conditions it is experienced. His end is reached when he has disengaged that excitement and enlightening of the human mind, of which the great aim and
virtue, and noted it, as a chemist notes some natural element, for himself and achievements of what, as Christian art, is often falsely opposed to the
others; and the rule for those who would reach this end is stated with great Renaissance, were another result. This outbreak of the human spirit may be
exactness in the words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:—De se borner a traced far into the middle age itself, with its qualities already clearly
connaitre de pres les belles choses, et a s'en nourrir en exquis amateurs, en pronounced, the care for physical beauty, the worship of the body, the
humanistes accomplis. breaking down of those limits which the religious system of the middle age
imposed on the heart and the imagination. I have taken as an example of this
What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract movement, this earlier Renaissance within the middle age itself, and as an
definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the expression of its qualities, two little compositions in early French; not
power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects. He will because they constitute the best possible expression of them, but because they
remember always that beauty exists in many forms. To him all periods, types, help the unity of my series, inasmuch as the Renaissance ends also in France,
schools of taste, are in themselves equal. In all ages there have been some in French poetry, in a phase of which the writings of Joachim du Bellay are in
excellent workmen, and some excellent work done. The question he asks is many ways the most perfect illustration; the Renaissance thus putting forth in
always:—In whom did the stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find France an aftermath, a wonderful later growth, the products of which have to
itself? where was the receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? "The the full that subtle and delicate sweetness which belongs to a refined and
ages are all equal," says William Blake, "but genius is always above its age." comely decadence; just as its earliest phases have the freshness which belongs
to all periods of growth in art, the charm of ascesis, of the austere and serious
girding of the loins in youth.
Often it will require great nicety to disengage this virtue from the commoner
elements with which it may be found in combination. Few artists, not Goethe
or Byron even, work quite cleanly, casting off all debris, and leaving us only But it is in Italy, in the fifteenth century, that the interest of the Renaissance
what the heat of their imagination has wholly fused and transformed. Take, mainly lies,—in that solemn fifteenth century which can hardly be studied too
for instance, the writings of Wordsworth. The heat of his genius, entering into much, not merely for its positive results in the things of the intellect and the
the substance of his work, has crystallised a part, but only a part, of it; and in imagination, its concrete works of art, its special and prominent personalities,
that great mass of verse there is much which might well be forgotten. But with their profound aesthetic charm, but for its general spirit and character,
scattered up and down it, sometimes fusing and transforming entire for the ethical qualities of which it is a consummate type.
compositions, like the Stanzas on Resolution and Independence, and the Ode
on the Recollections of Childhood, sometimes, as if at random, depositing a The various forms of intellectual activity which together make up the culture
fine crystal here or there, in a matter it does not wholly search through and of an age, move for the most part from different starting-points, and by
transform, we trace the action of his unique, incommunicable faculty, that unconnected roads. As products of the same generation they partake indeed of
strange, mystical sense of a life in natural things, and of man's life as a part of a common character, and unconsciously illustrate each other; but of the
nature, drawing strength and colour and character from local influences, from producers themselves, each group is solitary, gaining what advantage or
the hills and streams, and from natural sights and sounds. Well! that is the disadvantage there may be in intellectual isolation. Art and poetry,
virtue, the active principle in Wordsworth's poetry; and then the function of philosophy and the religious life, and that other life of refined pleasure and
the critic of Wordsworth is to follow up that active principle, to disengage it, action in the open places of the world, are each of them confined to its own
to mark the degree in which it penetrates his verse. circle of ideas, and those who prosecute either of them are generally little
curious of the thoughts of others. There come, however, from time to time,
The subjects of the following studies are taken from the history of the eras of more favourable conditions, in which the thoughts of men draw nearer
Renaissance, and touch what I think are the chief points in that complex, together than is their wont, and the many interests of the intellectual world
many-sided movement. I have explained in the first of them what I combine in one complete type of general culture. The fifteenth century in
understand by the word, giving it a much wider scope than was intended by Italy is one of these happier eras; and what is sometimes said of the age of
those who originally used it to denote only that revival of classical antiquity Pericles is true of that of Lorenzo:—it is an age productive in personalities,
in the fifteenth century which was but one of many results of a general many-sided, centralised, complete. Here, artists and philosophers and those
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whom the action of the world has elevated and made keen, do not live in violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant
isolation, but breathe a common air, and catch light and heat from each other's combinations. That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image
thoughts. There is a spirit of general elevation and enlightenment in which all of ours, under which we group them—a design in a web, the actual threads of
alike communicate. It is the unity of this spirit which gives unity to all the which pass out beyond it. This at least of flamelike our life has, that it is but
various products of the Renaissance; and it is to this intimate alliance with the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner
mind, this participation in the best thoughts which that age produced, that the or later on their ways.
art of Italy in the fifteenth century owes much of its grave dignity and
influence. Or if we begin with the inward world of thought and feeling, the whirlpool is
still more rapid, the flame more eager and devouring. There it is no longer the
Conclusion to The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873) gradual darkening of the eye and fading of colour from the wall,—the
movement of the shore-side, where the water flows down indeed, though in
[Pater’s note to the 3rd edition]: apparent rest,—but the race of the mid-stream, a drift of momentary acts of
sight and passion and thought. At first sight experience seems to bury us
under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and
This brief "Conclusion" was omitted in the second edition of this book, as I
conceived it might possibly mislead some of those young men into whose importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action.
But when reflexion begins to act upon those objects they are dissipated under
hands it might fall. On the whole, I have thought it best to reprint it here, with
its influence; the cohesive force seems suspended like a trick of magic; each
some slight changes which bring it closer to my original meaning. I have
object is loosed into a group of impressions—colour, odour, texture—in the
dealt more fully in Marius the Epicurean with the thoughts suggested by it.
mind of the observer. And if we continue to dwell in thought on this world,
Legei pou Herakleitos hoti panta khorei kai ouden menei. not of objects in the solidity with which language invests them, but of
impressions unstable, flickering, inconsistent, which burn and are
extinguished with our consciousness of them, it contracts still further; the
[Pater's translation: "Herakleitos says somewhere that All things give way; whole scope of observation is dwarfed to the narrow chamber of the
nothing remains." Plato, Cratylus 402A] individual mind. Experience, already reduced to a swarm of impressions, is
ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through
which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which
we can only conjecture to be without. Every one of those impressions is the
To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a solitary
has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin prisoner its own dream of a world. Analysis goes a step farther still, and
with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more assures us that those impressions of the individual mind to which, for each
exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the one of us, experience dwindles down, are in perpetual flight; that each of
flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment them is limited by time, and that as time is infinitely divisible, each of them is
but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? infinitely divisible also; all that is actual in it being a single moment, gone
But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibres, are present not while we try to apprehend it, of which it may ever be more truly said that it
in the human body alone: we detect them in places most remote from it. Our has ceased to be than that it is. To such a tremulous wisp constantly re-
physical life is a perpetual motion of them—the passage of the blood, the forming itself on the stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a
wasting and repairing of the lenses of the eye, the modification of the tissues relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life
of the brain by every ray of light and sound—processes which science fines itself down. It is with this movement, with the passage and dissolution
reduces to simpler and more elementary forces. Like the elements of which of impressions, images, sensations, that analysis leaves off—that continual
we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us; it rusts iron vanishing away, that strange, perpetual weaving and unweaving of ourselves.
and ripens corn. Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast,
driven by many forces; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of
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Philosophiren, says Novalis, ist dephlegmatisiren vivificiren. The service of decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in
philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! we are all condamnes, as Victor
startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment some form grows Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite
perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the reprieve—les hommes sont tous condamnes a mort avec des sursis indefinis:
rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this
real and attractive for us,—for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the
but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to children of this world," in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding
us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time.
seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of
to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise,
forces unite in their purest energy? which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion—that it does
yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of this wisdom,
To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art's sake, has most;
success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality
habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.
is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things,
situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at
any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted
horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses,
strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's
hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some
passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some
tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun,
to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience
and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see
and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see
and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new
opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile
orthodoxy of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own. Philosophical theories or
ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up
what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. "Philosophy is the microscope
of thought." The theory or idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of
any part of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which we
cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves,
or what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us.

One of the most beautiful passages in the writings of Rousseau is that in the
sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in him of
the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had always clung about him,
and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He
asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that
remained; and he was not biassed by anything in his previous life when he
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Read Pater’s ekphrastic description, and search out the image to which it
refers. Does she have “strange thoughts?” does she embody “the lust of
Rome?” Is she indeed “like the vampire,” who has been dead many times?

Clearly, Pater is up to something very different than Ruskin was, in his

From “Leonardo Da Vinci” (1868)

The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of
what in the ways of a thousand years men had come to desire. Hers is the
head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a
little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit,
little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite
passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or
beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty,
into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and
experience of the world have etched and moulded there, in that which they
have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism
of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the middle age with its spiritual
ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the
Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire,
she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has
been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked
for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of
Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been
In keeping with our practice of looking at the way Victorians wrote about the to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with
visual arts, here is a piece of writing that singlehandedly made this painting so which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the
famous. It’s from one of the essays in Pater’s The Renaissance: Studies in Art hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand
and Poetry, and of course it’s a description of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous “La experiences, is an old one; and modern philosophy has conceived the idea of
Gioconda” (also know as the Mona Lisa). humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself all modes of thought
and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy,
The description made such an impression on a generation of writers that in the symbol of the modern idea.
1936, when the poet William Butler Yeats edited The Oxford Book of Modern
Verse 1892-1935, he included this passage rendered into verse lines, calling it
the first modern poem.