On the plain of battle is a dream

etc.

We find a deeper relationship to the unrealized ideal in tragedy, where the depicted persons themselves are imbued with the consciousness of the inner contradiction between their reality and what should be. Comedy, on the other hand, strengthens and deepens the sense of the ideal by emphasizing, firstly, that aspect of reality which in no sense can be called beautiful, and, secondly, by presenting the persons who live by this reality as fully satisfied with it, thereby aggravating their contradiction with the ideal. This complacency, and not the external properties of the plot, constitutes an essential feature of the comic and a difference from the tragic element. Thus, for example, Etipus, who kills his father and marries his mother, might nevertheless have been a highly comic person, if he had regarded his terrible adventures with good-natured complacency, finding that everything had happened by accident and that he was not to blame for anything, and therefore could safely enjoy the kingdom that had come to him.

Defining comedy as a negative anticipation of the beauty of life through a typical depiction of anti-ideal reality in its self-satisfaction, by this complacency we mean, of course, not the satisfaction of this or that actor with this or that particular situation, but only the general satisfaction with the whole given order of life, which is fully shared even by those actors who are dissatisfied with something at a given moment. Thus, Molière's heroes, of course, are very dissatisfied when they are beaten with sticks, but they are quite satisfied with the order of things in which caning is one of the main forms of social life. In the same way, although Chatsky in "Woe from Wit" is very indignant at the life of Moscow society, it is clear from his own speeches that he would have been completely satisfied with this life, if only Sofya Pavlovna had paid him more attention, and if Famusov's guests had not listened with reverence to the Frenchman from Bordeaux and had not chattered in French: therefore, for all his discontent and even despair, Chatsky would have remained a completely comic person, if only he had been a living person at all. Sometimes moral indignation at some detail emphasizes the contentment with all the bad reality, which makes the comic impression still stronger. For example, in "Krechinsky's Wedding" the vivid comedy of one monologue is based on the fact that the speaker, who has suffered for cheating, finds it completely normal that some cheat in a card game, and others beat them for it, but is only indignant at the excessiveness of retribution in this case.

If, in addition to this distinction between the epic, the tragic, and the comic, we divide all the human types to be reproduced artistically into positive and negative (as is commonly done), it is easy to see that the former must predominate in the visual arts (sculpture and painting), and the latter in poetry. For sculpture and painting deal directly with corporeal forms, the beauty of which has already been realized in reality, although it still requires intensification or idealization, while the main subject of poetry is the moral and social life of mankind, infinitely far from the realization of its ideal. In order to sculpt a beautiful body or to paint a beautiful face, it is evident that prophetic divination and that direct creative power are necessary for the poetic representation of a perfect man[88] or an ideal society. Therefore, except for religious epics (which, with a few exceptions, deserve approval only for their conception and not for their execution), the greatest poets have refrained from depicting directly ideal or positive types. Such in Shakespeare are either hermits (in Romeo and Julius) or wizards (in The Tempest), but mainly women, and precisely those who have a more direct natural purity than a spiritual-human moral character. And Shakespeare, who has a weakness for virtuous types of both sexes, portrayed them comparatively badly.

In order to see that in the greatest works of poetry the meaning of spiritual life is realized only through reflection from non-ideal human reality, let us take Goethe's Faust. The positive meaning of this lyric-epic tragedy is revealed directly only in the last scene of the second movement and is abstractly summarized in the final chorus: "Alles Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichniss, etc." But where is the direct organic connection between this apotheosis and the other parts of the tragedy? The celestial powers and the "das ewig Weibliche" appear from above, and therefore are still from without, and are not revealed from within the content itself. The idea of the last scene is present throughout Faust, but it is only reflected in the part of the real, part of the fantastic action, of which the tragedy itself consists. Just as a ray of light plays in a diamond to the pleasure of the spectator, but without any change in the material basis of the stone, so here the spiritual light of the absolute ideal, refracted by the imagination of the artist, illuminates the dark human activity, but does not change its essence in the least. Let us suppose that a poet more powerful than Goethe and Shakespeare were to present to us in a complex poetic work an artistic, i.e., truthful and concrete, depiction of a truly spiritual life, that which ought to be, which perfectly realizes the absolute ideal, yet this miracle of art, hitherto unattained by any poet, would be in the midst of present reality only a splendid mirage in a waterless desert. irritating, and not quenching our spiritual thirst. Perfect art, in its ultimate task, must embody the absolute ideal, not in the imagination alone, but in fact, must spiritualize, transubstantiate our real life. If it is said that such a task goes beyond the boundaries of art, then the question arises: who set these limits? We do not find them in history; We see here art changing, in the process of development. Its individual branches reach the perfection possible in their own way and no longer prosper, but new ones arise. Everyone seems to agree that sculpture was brought to its final perfection by the ancient Greeks; Further progress in the field of heroic epic and pure tragedy can hardly be expected in the same way. I will take the liberty of going further, and do not find it particularly bold to assert that, just as these forms of art were completed by the ancients, so the modern European peoples have already exhausted all other kinds of art known to us, and if the latter has a future, it is in an entirely new sphere of action. Of course, this future development of aesthetic creativity depends on the general course of history, for art in general is the sphere of the embodiment of ideas, and not of their initial origin and growth.

The first step towards positive aesthetics

I

To the many literary reactions of recent times, partly provoked by opposite extremes, and partly not provoked by anything positive, there has been added a reaction in favor of "pure" art, or "art for art's sake." It undoubtedly belongs to the first category, to the category of apologetic reactions; the opposite extreme, by which it is caused, is in everyone's memory[92]. But is it really such an inevitable fate for us to balance one untruth with another and to subordinate our mental development to the badly and "hard-heartedly" understood law of retribution: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? If, as is commonly said, one error naturally causes another, opposite one, then it is not quite natural for man, as a rational being, to submit to such a natural process of error, but it is much more natural for him to oppose any error with a simple and pure truth; It is also more fruitful.

When, for example, the writers who declared Pushkin a "vulgar" asked, in confirmation of this idea: "What benefit did Pushkin's poetry bring and still does?" - and they were indignantly objected to this: "Pushkin is a priest of pure art, of beautiful form; poetry should not be useful, poetry is above usefulness!" – then such words do not answer either the enemy or the truth, and as a result leave only mutual misunderstanding and contempt. And yet the real, just answer is so simple and close: "No, Pushkin's poetry, taken as a whole (for it is necessary to measure by a "good measure"), has been and is of great use, because the perfect beauty of its form enhances the action of the spirit that is embodied in it, and this spirit is alive, good and sublime, as he himself testifies in the famous verses:

And for a long time I will be so dear to the people,

That I awakened good feelings with a lyre,

That in this cruel age I glorified freedom

And he called for mercy for the fallen... [93]"