In Search of the Miraculous

art. And yet there is an enormous difference between your art and the art of which I

speak. In your art everything is subjective—the artist's perception of this or that

sensation; the forms in which he tries to express his sensations and the perception of

these forms by other people. In one and the same phenomenon one artist may feel one

thing and another artist quite a different thing. One and the same sunset may evoke a

feeling of joy in one artist and sadness in another. Two artists may strive to express

exactly the same perceptions by entirely different methods, in different forms; or

entirely different perceptions in the same forms—according to how they were taught,

or contrary to it. And the spectators, listeners, or readers will perceive, not what the

artist wished to convey or what he felt, but what the forms in which he expresses his

sensations will make them feel by association. Everything is subjective and

everything is accidental, that is to say, based on accidental associations—the impression of the artist and his 'creation' " (he emphasized the word "creation"), "the perceptions of the spectators, listeners, or readers.

"In real art there is nothing accidental. It is mathematics. Everything in it can be calculated, everything can be known beforehand. The artist knows and understands what he wants to convey and his work cannot produce one impression on one man

and another impression on another,

presuming, of course, people on one level. It will always, and with mathematical

certainty, produce one and the same impression.

"At the same time the same work of art will produce different impressions on

people of different levels. And people of lower levels will never receive from it what

people of higher levels receive. This is real, objective art. Imagine some scientific work—a book on astronomy or chemistry. It is impossible that one person should

understand it in one way and another in another way. Everyone who is sufficiently

prepared and who is able to read this book will understand what the author means, and

precisely as the author means it. An objective work of art is just such a book, except

that it affects the emotional and not only the intellectual side of man."

"Do such works of objective art exist at the present day?" I asked. "Of course they exist," answered G. "The great Sphinx in Egypt is such a work of art, as well as some historically known works of architecture, certain statues of gods, and many other

things. There are figures of gods and of various mythological beings that can be read

like books, only not with the mind but with the emotions, provided they are

sufficiently developed. In the course of our travels in Central Asia we found, in the

desert at the foot of the Hindu Kush, a strange figure which we thought at first was

some ancient god or devil. At first it produced upon us simply the impression of being

a curiosity. But after a while we began to feel that this figure contained many things, a big, complete, and complex system of cosmology. And slowly, step by step, we began

to decipher this system. It was in the body of the figure, in its legs, in its arms, in its head, in its eyes, in its ears; everywhere. In the whole statue there was nothing

accidental, nothing without meaning. And gradually we understood the aim of the

people who built this statue. We began to feel their thoughts, their feelings. Some of

us thought that we saw their faces, heard their voices. At all events, we grasped the

meaning of what they wanted to convey to us across thousands of years, and not only

the meaning, but all the feelings and the emotions connected with it as well. That

indeed was art!"

I was very interested in what G. said about art. His principle of the division of art into subjective and objective told me a great deal. I still did not understand everything he put into these words. I had always felt in art certain divisions and gradations which

I could neither define nor formulate, and which nobody else had formulated.

Nevertheless I knew that these divisions and gradations existed. So that all discussions

about art without the recognition of these divisions and gradations seemed to me

empty and useless, simply arguments about words. In what G. had said, in his

indications of the different levels which we fail to see and

understand, I felt an approach to the very gradations that I had felt but could not

define.

In general, many things which G. said astonished me. There were ideas which I

could not accept and which appeared to me fantastic and without foundation. Other

things, on the contrary, coincided strangely with what I had thought myself and with

what I had arrived at long ago. I was most of all interested in the connectedness of everything he said. I already felt that his ideas were not detached one from another, as

all philosophical and scientific ideas are, but made one whole, of which, as yet, I saw

only some of the pieces.