And that yours alone expresses the look,

The poet cannot retell this. [105]

But if so, then what is the significance and task of art? Our author approaches this question from the real side. Refuting the opinion that art creates perfect beauty, which does not exist in reality, he remarks: "There is no perfection in works of art; Whoever is dissatisfied with real beauty can be even less satisfied with the beauty created by art. Thus, it is impossible to agree with the usual explanation of the meaning of art; but there are hints in this explanation which may be called just, if properly interpreted. Man is not satisfied with the beautiful in reality, this beauty is not enough for him – this is the essence and truthfulness of ordinary explanation, which, being falsely understood itself, needs to be explained" [106].

The author's own explanation is unsatisfactory, and I will not dwell on it. Nor will I defend all the 17 theses with which his dissertation ends. Its main content is reduced to two propositions: 1) existing art is only a weak surrogate for reality, and 2) beauty in nature has an objective reality, and these theses will remain. Their assertion in the treatise, constrained by the limits of the author's special philosophical outlook (he was at that time an extreme adherent of Feuerbach), does not resolve, but only poses a real task; but correct formulation is the first step towards resolution. Only on the basis of these truths (the objectivity of beauty and the insufficiency of art), and not through a return to artistic dilettantism, will it be possible to continue fruitful work in the field of aesthetics, which should link artistic creativity with the highest goals of human life.

COMMENTS: THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS POSITIVE AESTHETICS

First published in Vestnik Evropy, 1894, No 1, pp. 294–302.

Solovyov defined the main content of the work in a letter to the famous publicist K. K. Arseniev: "... I am defending a treatise on the relationship between art and reality, which is probably known to you, and this gives some interest to the article" (Letters, 2, 89). Solovyov told the editor of Vestnik Evropy, Stasyulevich, about the circumstances that caused the appearance of the article: "It is very convenient to connect it with recent aesthetic interpretations... moreover, there is something in it that is especially pleasant for our friend A. N. Pypin, namely, a certain intercession for Chernyshevsky against Boborykin, who recently bore the deceased in our Moscow philosophical journal" (Letters, 1, 114). In 1893, a collection of articles by N. G. Chernyshevsky was published, and the name, which had long been banned, reappeared in the pages of the Russian press. The editors of Vestnik Evropy, which included Chernyshevsky's cousin Pypin, understood Solovyov's article as recognition of the merits of the publicist of the sixties in the creation of "true aesthetics" and as a statement against the latest followers of the theory of "art for art's sake." With this approach, which was also adopted by Russian readers, Solovyov's own aesthetic views receded into the background, and their fundamental difference from Chernyshevsky's views was obscured.

What does the word "picturesqueness" mean?

As Prince Anthony quite rightly notes. S. M. Volkonsky,

"Our aesthetic terminology is rather vague and needs to be crystallized more than any other; it is the duty of every writer to help establish the correct meaning of words." This explains the "answer" of Book II. Volkonsky, as well as my next lines.

It was a question of whether the real historical image of Ivan the Terrible and the most characteristic phenomena of his reign - the Moscow executions and Novgorod massacres - were picturesque. Kn. Volkonsky claims that all this was picturesque, although he agrees that there was no beauty in all this. Recognizing picturesqueness as one of the kinds of beauty, I do not admit that the ugly or the bereft of beauty can be picturesque, although it can serve as material and occasion for picturesque and beautiful artistic representations, which resemble their historical material as beautiful flowers and fruits do not resemble the dung-earth from which they grow.

If I were to hesitate in my opinion that Ivan the Terrible and his deeds are picturesque only in their artistic depiction, and were not at all so in their historical reality, then Prince S. M. Volkonsky would have strengthened me in this idea with his answer.

In fact, his emphatic statement about the picturesqueness of the historical subjects mentioned is accompanied by explanations that give it the opposite meaning and therefore directly confirm my view. To the question whether the Moscow executions were picturesque, kn. Volkonsky answers: "Yes, there were, as well as Nero's torches." — Was the mass of ten thousand drowned picturesque?

Yes, there was, just like the mass of suffering criminals that Dante's imagination pictured, like the Florentine plague in the eyes of Boccaccio, like the Inquisition and Torquemada in the eyes of Victor Hugo. Yes, Ivan the Terrible and his deeds are picturesque in the imagination and in the images of Antokolsky, Samoilov, A. Tolstoy, as hell is picturesque in Dante, as martyrs burned in pitch are picturesque in Semiradsky, the plague in Boccaccio, the Inquisition in Victor Hugo, and, finally, I add my example, for some reason bypassed by Prince S. Volkonsky, as developing leprosy is picturesque in Flaubert.