And now, after
endeavouring to grapple with Schopenhauer's theory of art, what does
it come to at last? Is it more than this that the philosopher explains
it as unconscious absorption in the manifestation of an Idea, and that
it is a refuge from life and its woes _We_ may have _felt_ all that he
has described, and, for a philosopher, Schopenhauer has a great gift
of expression, indeed the love of art and literature glows on almost
every page of his book. But his theory is surely scarcely more than a
re-statement of what we _feel_, and if we ask whence comes the
artistic quality--from the heart or the nerves--or the brain;--what is
the philosophical definition of the _compulsion_ in art; how does
philosophy account for its strange compelling, unique, possessing,
power--we get no answer at all, it eludes all tests. We get no
explanation of what the strange insight is which we find in the man of
Genius, or of the faculty that gives the capacity for absorption and
that excites it in us. The genesis of this wonderful faculty remains
unknown to us, undefined. Unconsciousness is a necessary ingredient in
it, according to Schopenhauer, and this helps us to realise the
difficulty of expressing it.
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