What Is Art? · Chapter
IX explained
Tolstoy argues that the unbelief of the upper classes has perverted art, stripping it of religious subject-matter, beauty of form, and sincerity.
What happens
Tolstoy argues that the unbelief of the upper classes has perverted art, stripping it of religious subject-matter, beauty of form, and sincerity. He contends that true art transmits fresh feelings from religious perception, while upper-class art, focused on enjoyment, is limited to the stale feelings of pride, sexual desire, and weariness of life. He contrasts the rich, varied life of working people with the impoverished emotional range of the idle rich, citing Gontchareff's dismissal of peasant life as an example of this misconception.
Themes in this chapter
Perversion of Art by Professionalism and Gain
Tolstoy argues that upper-class art, driven by the pursuit of enjoyment rather than religious perception, has become artificial, brain-spun, and deprived of true artistic value.
Religious Perception as the Guide for Art
He asserts that only art based on religious perception can transmit fresh, new feelings, and that the upper classes' lack of belief has impoverished art's subject-matter.
Social Class and Exclusivity in Art
The chapter contrasts the rich, varied feelings of working people with the limited, trivial feelings of the idle rich, showing how class exclusivity has narrowed art's emotional range.
Characters to notice
- Ivan Goncharov
Cited as an aesthetician who believed peasant life was exhausted as subject-matter after Turgenev's works, while finding endless variety in the love affairs and discontent of the wealthy.
- Ivan Turgenev
Mentioned as the author of 'Memoirs of a Sportsman,' which Gontchareff thought had used up all there was to describe in peasant life.
Key passages
“The first great result was that art was deprived of the infinite, varied, and profound religious subject-matter proper to it.”
The first major consequence was that art lost its deep and diverse religious content.
Summarizes the initial effect of upper-class unbelief on art.
“The life of a labouring man, with its endlessly varied forms of labour... all this to us, who have not these interests and possess no religious perception, seems monotonous in comparison with those small enjoyments and insignificant cares of our life.”
The rich, varied life of a worker appears dull to us, who lack such interests and religious insight, compared to our trivial pleasures and concerns.
Highlights the contrast between working-class and upper-class life.