Plotino – Tratado 31,1 (V, 8, 1) — A beleza das artes

1. Puesto que, según decimos, lo que ha llegado a la contemplación de la belleza inteligible y que comprende la belleza de la inteligencia verdadera, puede también imprimir en su pensamiento la idea del padre de la inteligencia que se encuentra más allá de ella, trataremos de comprobar y de explicarnos a nosotros mismos, en tanto en cuanto ello sea posible, cómo se alcanza a contemplar la belleza de la inteligencia y del mundo inteligible. Consideremos para esto, si se quiere, dos masas de piedra que se hallen cercanas la una de la otra, pero la primera todavía en estado bruto y no trabajada, y la segunda, en cambio, preparada ya por la mano del artista y transformada en la estatua de un dios o de un hombre, de un dios que pueda ser una Gracia o una Musa, y de un hombre que no sea uno cualquiera sino el que el arte ha logrado producir combinando a tal fin todas las cosas bellas. Parece cierto que la piedra en la que el arte hizo penetrar la belleza de una forma ha de ser bella, no por el hecho de ser piedra (porque en este caso otra piedra lo sería de igual modo), sino por la forma el arte ha introducido en ella. La materia, ciertamente, poseía esta forma, que se encontraba en el pensamiento artista antes de haber llegado a la piedra. Y se encontraba en él, no porque (el artista) dispusiese de ojos y de manos, sino por su misma participación en el arte. He aquí, que esta belleza superior se daba como presupuesta en el arte; porque la belleza que vino a la piedra no es en la que aparece en el arte, ya que ésta tiene carácter permanente y de ella proviene otra, que resulta anterior a la primera. Y aún esta última belleza no ha permanecido pura y tal como aspiraba a ser, sino en la medida que la piedra hubo de ceder al arte. Si el arte produce objeto con arreglo a lo que él es y posee — lo hace según la idea de lo que crea —, no por esto deja de poseer una belleza superior y mucho más verdadera; porque la belleza del arte es realmente mucho mayor que la que encuentra en el objeto exterior. Pues, cuanto más se inclina a la materia y cuanto más se extiende, tanto más la belleza y queda por debajo de la belleza del Uno , Todo lo que se divide, se aleja más y más de mismo, ya se trate del vigor físico, del calor, de la fuerza general y, naturalmente, de la belleza. El primer agente productor, tomado en sí mismo, debe ser necesariamente superior a lo producido por él. Porque no es la falta de música, sino la música, precisamente, la que hace al músico, y la música que se da en las cosas sensibles es debida a otra música anterior a ella. Si se desprecia, las artes porque sólo producen imitaciones de la naturaleza, digamos también, ante todo, que las cosas naturales son, a su ver imitaciones de otras cosas, y convengamos luego en que (las artes) no imitan en absoluto los objetos visibles, sino que remontan a las razones de las que ha surgido la propia naturaleza. Añadamos a ello que producen muchas cosas de sí mismas y suplen lo que a otras les falta, como poseedoras que son de la belleza. Así, Fidias hizo su Zeus sin mirar a nada sensible, sino imaginándolo tal cual sería si accediese a mostrarse ante nuestros ojos.

I. Puisque celui qui s’élève à la contemplation du monde intelligible, et qui conçoit la beauté de l’Intelligence véritable, peut aussi, comme nous l’avons reconnu, saisir par intuition le principe supérieur, le père de l’Intelligence, essayons de comprendre et de nous expliquer à nousmêmes, autant que nos forces nous le permettent, comment il est possible de contempler la beauté de l’Intelligence et du monde intelligible. Figurons-nous deux marbres placés l’un à côté de l’autre, l’un brut et sans aucune trace d’art, l’autre façonné par le ciseau du sculpteur qui en a fait la statue d’une déesse, d’une Grâce ou d’une Muse, par exemple, ou bien celle d’un homme, non de tel ou tel individu, mais d’un homme dans lequel l’art aurait réuni tous les traits de beauté qu’offrent les divers individus. Après avoir ainsi reçu de l’art la beauté de la forme (εἴδους κάλλος), le second marbre paraîtra beau, non en vertu de son essence qui est d’être pierre (sinon, l’autre bloc serait aussi beau que lui), mais en vertu de la forme qu’il a reçue de l’art. Or celle-ci ne se trouvait pas dans la matière de la statue. C’était dans la pensée do l’artiste qu’elle existait avant de passer dans le marbre, et elle existait en lui, non parce qu’il avait des yeux et des mains, mais parce qu’il participait à l’art. C’est donc dans l’Art qu’existait cette beauté supérieure: elle ne saurait s’incorporer à la pierre; demeurant en elle-même, elle a engendré une forme inférieure, qui, en passant dans la matière, n’a pu ni conserver sa pureté, ni répondre complètement à la volonté de l’artiste, et n’a plus d’autre perfection que celle que comporte la matière. Si l’Art réussit à produire des œuvres qui soient conformes à son essence constitutive (sa nature étant de produire le beau), il a encore, par la possession de la beauté qui lui est essentielle, une beauté plus grande et plus véritable que celle qui passe dans les objets extérieurs. En effet, comme toute forme s’étend en passant dans la matière, elle est plus faible que celle qui demeure une. Tout ce qui s’étend s’éloigne de soi-même, comme le font la force, la chaleur, et en général toute propriété ; il en est de même de la beauté. Tout principe créateur est toujours supérieur à la chose créée : ce n’est pas la privation de la musique, mais c’est la musique même qui crée le musicien ; c’est la musique intelligible qui’crée la musique sensible. Si l’on cherche à rabaisser les arts en disant que pour créer ils imitent la nature, nous répondrons d’abord que les natures des êtres sont elles-mêmes les images d’autres essences ; ensuite que les arts ne se bornent pas à imiter les objets qui s’offrent à nos regards, mais qu’ils remontent jusqu’aux raisons [idéales] dont dérive la nature des objets; enfin, qu’ils créent beaucoup de choses par eux-mêmes, et qu’ils ajoutent ce qui manque à la perfection de l’objet, parce qu’ils possèdent en eux-mêmes la beauté. Phidias semble avoir représenté Jupiter sans jelor nul regard sur les choses sensibles, en le concevant tel qu’il nous apparaîtrait s’il se révélait jamais à nos yeux ¹.

ART MAKES A STATUE OUT OF ROUGH MARBLE.

1. Since he who rises to the contemplation of the intelligible world, and who conceives the beauty of true intelligence, can also, as we have pointed out, by intuition grasp the superior Principle, the Father of Intelligence, let us, so far as our strength allows us, try to understand and explain to ourselves how it is possible to contemplate the beauty of Intelligence and of the intelligible world. Let us imagine two pieces of marble placed side by side, the one rough and inartistic, the other one fashioned by the sculptor’s chisel, who made of it the statue of a goddess, a grace, or a muse; or that of a man — but not that of any individual whatever, but that of a (cultured gentle) man in whom art would have gathered all the traits of beauty offered by different individuals. After having thus from art received the beauty of the form, the second marble will appear beautiful, not by virtue of its essence, which is to be stone — for otherwise the other block would be as beautiful as this one — but because of the form received through art. The latter, however, did not exist in the matter of the statue. It was in the thought of the artist that it existed before passing into the marble; and it existed therein, not because it had eyes and hands, but because it participated in art. It was therefore in art that this superior beauty existed. It could not have become incorporated in stone.

Dwelling within itself, it begat an inferior form, which, passing into matter, could neither preserve all its purity, nor completely respond to the will of the artist, possessing no perfection other than that allowed by matter. As the nature of art is to produce beauty, if art succeed in producing beauty which conforms to its constitutive essence, then, by the possession of the beauty essential to it, art possesses a beauty still greater and truer than that which passes into exterior objects. As all form extends by passing into matter, (this objectified form) is weaker than that which remains one. All that extends abandons its own (nature), as do force, heat, and in general any property; likewise with beauty. Every creating principle is always superior to the created thing. It is not the lack of musical ability, but the music itself that creates the musician; while it is the intelligible music that creates the sense music. It has been attempted to degrade the arts by saying that to create they imitate nature. This may be answered by pointing out that the natures of beings are themselves the images of other beings (or essences) ; besides, the arts do not limit themselves to the imitation of objects which offer themselves to our view, but tjjftf they go as far back as the (ideal) reasons from which are derived the nature of objects. Further the arts independently create many things, and to the perfection of the object they add what is lacking, because they possess beauty in themselves. Phidias seems to have represented Jupiter without copying any sense-objects, conceiving him such as he would appear to us if he ever revealed himself to our eyes.

1. It is a principle with us that one who has attained to the vision of the Intellectual Beauty and grasped the beauty of the Authentic Intellect will be able also to come to understand the Father and Transcendent of that Divine Being. It concerns us, then, to try to see and say, for ourselves and as far as such matters may be told, how the Beauty of the divine Intellect and of the Intellectual Kosmos may be revealed to contemplation.

Let us go to the realm of magnitudes: Suppose two blocks of stone lying side by side: one is unpatterned, quite untouched by art; the other has been minutely wrought by the craftsman’s hands into some statue of god or man, a Grace or a Muse, or if a human being, not a portrait but a creation in which the sculptor’s art has concentrated all loveliness.

Now it must be seen that the stone thus brought under the artist’s hand to the beauty of form is beautiful not as stone – for so the crude block would be as pleasant – but in virtue of the form or idea introduced by the art. This form is not in the material; it is in the designer before ever it enters the stone; and the artificer holds it not by his equipment of eyes and hands but by his participation in his art. The beauty, therefore, exists in a far higher state in the art; for it does not come over integrally into the work; that original beauty is not transferred; what comes over is a derivative and a minor: and even that shows itself upon the statue not integrally and with entire realization of intention but only in so far as it has subdued the resistance of the material.

Art, then, creating in the image of its own nature and content, and working by the Idea or Reason-Principle of the beautiful object it is to produce, must itself be beautiful in a far higher and purer degree since it is the seat and source of that beauty, indwelling in the art, which must naturally be more complete than any comeliness of the external. In the degree in which the beauty is diffused by entering into matter, it is so much the weaker than that concentrated in unity; everything that reaches outwards is the less for it, strength less strong, heat less hot, every power less potent, and so beauty less beautiful.

Then again every prime cause must be, within itself, more powerful than its effect can be: the musical does not derive from an unmusical source but from music; and so the art exhibited in the material work derives from an art yet higher.

Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by imitation of natural objects; for, to begin with, these natural objects are themselves imitations; then, we must recognise that they give no bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the Ideas from which Nature itself derives, and, furthermore, that much of their work is all their own; they are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking. Thus Pheidias wrought the Zeus upon no model among things of sense but by apprehending what form Zeus must take if he chose to become manifest to sight.