Podcast : Introduction à l’Objectivisme d’Ayn Rand, épisode 6

Dans cet épisode :

  • Qu’est-ce que l’art ?
  • Le sense of life
  • Les branches de l’art
  • Le romantisme
  • Classicisme, naturalisme et modernisme
  • Le jugement esthétique
  • Qu’est-ce qu’un bon artiste ?

Sources

Lorsqu’aucun nom n’est précisé, l’auteur est Ayn Rand. Si jamais un propos tenu au cours du podcast vous semble avoir besoin d’être sourcé et ne l’est pas ici, contactez-moi, je ferai mon possible pour compléter ce manque. Mais ces sources n’ont pas vocation à être absolument exhaustives.

Introduction

[00:35] Qu’est-ce que l’esthétique ?
  • « Philosophy: Who Needs It » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1982), chap. 1, p. 4-5 : « The fifth and last branch of philosophy is esthetics, the study of art, which is based on metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. »
[00:42] Liens personnels d’Ayn Rand avec l’art
  • Ses romans et pièces de théâtre : Night of January 16th (1934), Ideal (1934), We the Living (1936), Anthem (1938), Think Twice (1939), The Unconquered (1940), The Fountainhead (1943), Atlas Shrugged (1957).
  • A étudié le jeu d’acteur : Voir Interview biographique d’Ayn Rand #5 conduite par Barbara & Nathaniel Branden (Ayn Rand Archives), 1960, transcript, p. 161 ; BRITTING Jeff, Ayn Rand (Overlook Illustrated Lives. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2004), « Important Things (1915-1925) », p. 27.
  • A travaillé dans le milieu du cinéma : Voir Interviews biographiques d’Ayn Rand conduites par Barbara & Nathaniel Branden (Ayn Rand Archives), 1960-1961 et McCONNELL Scott, 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand (New York: New American Library / Penguin Group, 2010).
  • S’est intéressée de près à l’architecture : Voir HARRIMAN David (éd.) Journals of Ayn Rand, Part 2: « The Fountainhead« , chap. 5 « Architectural Research », p. 117-164
  • A noué des relations avec de nombreux artistes : Voir principalement McCONNELL Scott, 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand (op. cit.) et BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (New York, Plume, 1997).
  • Avait des préférences artistiques marquées : « Favorites in Art », interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), chap. 17, p. 123-130 ; et BERLINER Michael S. « Ayn Rand’s Musical Biography » (2021), sur le blog New Ideal.
[01:15] Rand a formulé sa philosophie dans un but artistique
  • « Philosophical Notes on the Creative Process » dans Journals of Ayn Rand (éd. HARRIMAN David, New York: Plume, 1999), part. 4 « Atlas Shrugged », chap. 11 « The Mind on Strike », entrée du 4 mai 1946, p. 479 : « In my own case, I seem to be both a theoretical philosopher and a fiction writer. But it is the last that interests me most; the first is only the means to the last; the absolutely necessary means, but only the means; the fiction story is the end. Without an understanding and statement of the right philosophical principle, I cannot create the right story; but the discovery of the principle interests me only as the discovery of the proper knowledge to be used for my life purpose, and my life purpose is the creation of the kind of world (people and events) that I like, i.e., that represents human perfection. Philosophical knowledge is necessary in order to define human perfection, but I do not care to stop at the definition; I want to use it, to apply it in my work (in my personal life, too—but the core, center and purpose of my personal life, of my whole life, is my work). »
  • « The Goal of My Writing » (1963) dans The Romantic Manifesto (Second Revised Edition, New York, Signet / New American Library, 1975), chap. 11, p. 155 : « The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself—to which any didactic, intellectual or philosophical values contained in a novel are only the means. »
  • Ibid., p. 156-157 : « Since my purpose is the presentation of an ideal man, I had to define and present the conditions which make him possible and which his existence requires. Since man’s character is the product of his premises, I had to define and present the kind of premises and values that create the character of an ideal man and motivate his actions; which means that I had to define and present a rational code of ethics. Since man acts among and deals with other men, I had to present the kind of social system that makes it possible for ideal men to exist and to function—a free, productive, rational system, which demands and rewards the best in every man, great or average, and which is, obviously, laissez-faire capitalism. »
  • Interview d’Ayn Rand pour Playboy (mars 1964), p. 40 : « My primary purpose is the projection of an ideal man, of man “as he might be and ought to be.” Philosophy is the necessary means to that end. »
[01:39] Réflexions spécifiques sur l’art de l’écriture
  • Voir The Art of Fiction (New York: Plume, 2000).

Qu’est-ce que l’art ?

[02:16] Universalité et ancienneté de l’art
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 3 : « [A]rt is of passionately intense importance and profoundly personal concern to most men—and it has existed in every known civilization, accompanying man’s steps from the early hours of his prehistorical dawn, earlier than the birth of written language. »
[02:25] Différence animaux / humains
  • « For the New Intellectual » (1961), dans For the New Intellectual (New York, Signet / New American Library, 1963), p. 9 : « Man’s consciousness shares with animals the first two stages of its development: sensations and perceptions; but it is the third stage, conceptions, that makes him man. Sensations are integrated into perceptions automatically, by the brain of a man or of an animal. But to integrate perceptions into conceptions by a process of abstraction, is a feat that man alone has the power to perform—and he has to perform it by choice. The process of abstraction, and of concept-formation is a process of reason, of thought: it is not automatic nor instinctive nor involuntary nor infallible. »
  • « Philosophy and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 15-16 : « Man, by his nature, cannot refrain from generalizing; he cannot live moment by moment, without context, without past or future; he cannot eliminate his integrating capacity, i.e., his conceptual capacity, and confine his consciousness to an animal’s perceptual range. Just as an animal’s consciousness cannot be stretched to deal with abstractions, so man’s consciousness cannot be shrunk to deal with nothing but immediate concretes. »
[02:35] L’épistémologie des corvidés
  • « The Cognitive Role of Concepts », dans Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Expanded Second edition, New York, Meridian / Penguin Books USA Inc., 1990), p. 63 : « Since consciousness is a specific faculty, it has a specific nature or identity and, therefore, its range is limited: it cannot perceive everything at once; since awareness, on all its levels, requires an active process, it cannot do everything at once. Whether the units with which one deals are percepts or concepts, the range of what man can hold in the focus of his conscious awareness at any given moment, is limited. The essence, therefore, of man’s incomparable cognitive power is the ability to reduce a vast amount of information to a minimal number of units—which is the task performed by his conceptual faculty. And the principle of unit-economy is one of that faculty’s essential guiding principles. »
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 7 : « Metaphysics—the science that deals with the fundamental nature of reality, involves man’s widest abstractions. It includes every concrete he has ever perceived. It involves such a vast sum of knowledge and such a long chain of concepts that no man could hold it all in the focus of his immediate conscious awareness. »
  • Ibid., p. 9 : « When we come to normative abstractions—to the task of defining moral principles and projecting what man ought to be—the psycho-epistemological process required is still harder. The task demands years of study—and the results are almost impossible to communicate without the assistance of art. An exhaustive philosophical treatise defining moral values, with a long list of virtues to be practiced, will not do it; it will not convey what an ideal man would be like and how he would act: no mind can deal with so immense a sum of abstractions. »
[02:54] Le besoin de concrétiser les abstractions métaphysiques
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 12 : « To acquire the full, persuasive, irresistible power of reality, man’s metaphysical abstractions have to confront him in the form of concretes—i.e., in the form of art. »
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 35 : « Man’s profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness. »
  • Ibid. p. 64 : « Each art fulfills the function of bringing man’s concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allowing him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts. […] The different branches of art serve to unify man’s consciousness and offer him a coherent view of existence. Whether that view is true or false is not an esthetic matter. The crucially esthetic matter is psycho-epistemological: the integration of a conceptual consciousness. »
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 28 : « It is not journalistic information or scientific education or moral guidance that man seeks from a work of art (though these may be involved as secondary consequences), but the fulfillment of a more profound need: a confirmation of his view of existence—a confirmation, not in the sense of resolving cognitive doubts, but in the sense of permitting him to contemplate his abstractions outside his own mind, in the form of existential concretes. »
[03:25] L’art primitif comme auxiliaire de la religion
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 8 : « Observe that in mankind’s history, art began as an adjunct (and, often, a monopoly) of religion. Religion was the primitive form of philosophy: it provided man with a comprehensive view of existence. Observe that the art of those primitive cultures was a concretization of their religion’s metaphysical and ethical abstractions. »
[03:35] L’art comme reflet de la philosophie d’une société
  • « Bootleg Romanticism » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 122 : « Art (including literature) is the barometer of a culture. It reflects the sum of a society’s deepest philosophical values: not its professed notions and slogans, but its actual view of man and of existence. The image of an entire society stretched out on a psychologist’s couch, revealing its naked subconscious, is an impossible. concept; yet that is what art accomplishes: it presents the equivalent of such a session, a transcript which is more eloquent and easier to diagnose than any other set of symptoms. »
  • « Basic Principles of Literature » (1968), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 89 : »The art of any given period or culture is a faithful mirror of that culture’s philosophy. If you see obscene, dismembered monstrosities leering at you from today’s esthetic mirrors—the aborted creations of mediocrity, irrationality and panic—you are seeing the embodied, concretized reality of the philosophical premises that dominate today’s culture. »
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 8 : « For instance, consider two statues of man: one as a Greek god, the other as a deformed medieval monstrosity. Both are metaphysical estimates of man; both are projections of the artist’s view of man’s nature; both are concretized representations of the philosophy of their respective cultures. »
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 106 : « Since art is the expression and product of philosophy, it is the first to mirror the vacuum at the base of a culture and the first to crumble. »
[03:44] L’art comme réponse à un besoin de la conscience
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 5 : « Art does have a purpose and does serve a human need; only it is not a material need, but a need of man’s consciousness. »
[03:54] Essentialisation et stylisation
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 8 : « Out of the countless number of concretes—of single, disorganized and (seemingly) contradictory attributes, actions and entities—an artist isolates the things which he regards as metaphysically essential and integrates them into a single new concrete that represents an embodied abstraction. »
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 26-27 : « An artist does not fake reality—he stylizes it. He’ selects those aspects of existence which he regards as metaphysically significant—and by isolating and stressing them, by omitting the insignificant and accidental, he presents his view of existence. His concepts are not divorced from the facts of reality—they are concepts which integrate the facts and his metaphysical evaluation of the facts. His selection constitutes his evaluation: everything included in a work of art—from theme to subject to brushstroke or adjective—acquires metaphysical significance by the mere fact of being included, of being important enough to include. »
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 57 : « “Stylized” means condensed to essential characteristics, which are chosen according to an artist’s view of man. »
  • Lettre à Stanle Greben (un lecteur) du 15 octobre 1950, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 484 : « You mention that the characters in my book are heroic, even though “in their actual lives there must still exist the small chores and activities of living—eating, sleeping, and even elimination, if you like.” This is another gaping hole in your thinking. Of course, these chores and activities exist. What of it? There is nothing evil nor degrading about them, but neither do they constitute the significance of human life. It is what you do with your life after eating, sleeping and eliminating that counts. These activities are the means, not the meaning, of human existence. They do not interfere in any way with the heroic qualities of a man—and one does not include them in a novel, not by reason of any “limitations”, but because the proper purpose of a novel is to present that which is significant, not to catalog indiscriminately every move and moment of a person’s life. »
[04:45] L’important
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 35-36 : « [Art] tells man, in effect, which aspects of his experience are to be regarded as essential, significant, important. In this sense, art teaches man how to use his consciousness. It conditions or stylizes man’s consciousness by conveying to him a certain way of looking at existence. »
  • « Philosophy and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 17 : « The key concept, in the formation of a sense of life, is the term « important. » It is a concept that belongs to the realm of values, since it implies an answer to the question: Important—to whom? Yet its meaning is different from that of moral values. « Important » does not necessarily mean « good. » It means « a quality, character or standing such as to entitle to attention or consideration » (The American College Dictionary). What, in a fundamental sense, is entitled to one’s attention or consideration? Reality. « Important »—in its essential meaning, as distinguished from its more limited and superficial uses—is a metaphysical term. […] It is only those values which he regards or grows to regard as « important, » those which represent his implicit view of reality, that remain in a man’s subconscious and form his sense of life. »
[05:35] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur l’art comme concrétisation de la métaphysique
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 8 : « Art is a concretization of metaphysics. Art brings man’s concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts. This is the psycho-epistemological function of art and the reason of its importance in man’s life (and the crux of the Objectivist esthetics). Just as language converts abstractions into the psycho-epistemological equivalent of concretes, into a manageable number of specific units—so art converts man’s metaphysical abstractions into the equivalent of concretes, into specific entities open to man’s direct perception. The claim that “art is a universal language” is not an empty metaphor, it is literally true—in the sense of the psycho-epistemological function performed by art. »
[06:46] Définition de l’art
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 8 : « Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. By a selective re-creation, art isolates and integrates those aspects of reality which represent man’s fundamental view of himself and of his relationship to existence. »
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 69 : « Works of art—like everything else in the universe—are entities of a specific nature: the concept requires a definition by their essential characteristics, which distinguish them from all other existing entities. The genus of art works is: man-made objects which present a selective re-creation of reality according to the artist’s metaphysical value-judgments, by means of a specific material medium. »
[06:59] L’art sert-il à quelque chose ?
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 4 : « One of the distinguishing characteristics of a work of art (including literature) is that it serves no practical, material end, but is an end in itself; it serves no purpose other than contemplation—and the pleasure of that contemplation is so intense, so deeply personal that a man experiences it as a self-sufficient, self-justifying primary and, often, resists or resents any suggestion to analyze it: the suggestion, to him, has the quality of an attack on his identity, on his deepest, essential self. No human emotion can be causeless, nor can so intense an emotion be causeless, irreducible and unrelated to the source of emotions (and of values): to the needs of a living entity’s survival. Art does have a purpose and does serve a human need; only it is not a material need, but a need of man’s consciousness. Art is inextricably tied to man’s survival—not to his physical survival, but to that on which his physical survival depends: to the preservation and survival of his consciousness. »

Le sense of life

[07:42] L’art sollicite le subconscient
  • « Writing and the Subconscious » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 2 : « What is colloquially called “inspiration”—namely, that you write without full knowledge of why you write as you do, yet it comes out well—is actually the subconscious summing-up of the premises and intentions you have set yourself. All writers have to rely on inspiration. But you have to know where it comes from, why it happens, and how to make it happen to you. All writers rely on their subconscious. But you have to know how to work with your own subconscious. »
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 31 : « An indication of the metaphysical slant of art can be seen in the popular notion that a reader of fiction “identifies himself with” some character or characters of the story. “To identify with” is a colloquial designation for a process of abstraction: it means to observe a common element between the character and oneself, to draw an abstraction from the character’s problems and apply it to one’s own life. Subconsciously, without any knowledge of esthetic theory, but by virtue of the implicit nature of art, this is the way in which most people react to fiction and to all other forms of art. »
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 41 : « It is possible to observe introspectively (up to a certain point) what one’s mind does while listening to music: it evokes subconscious material—images, actions, scenes, actual or imaginary experiences—that seems to flow haphazardly, without direction, in brief, random snatches, merging, changing and vanishing, like the progression of a dream. »
[08:04] Ce qu’est le subconscient
  • « Writing and the Subconscious » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 2  « Your conscious mind is a very limited “screen of vision”; at any one moment, it can hold only so much. For instance, if you are now concentrating on my words, then you are not thinking about your values, family, or past experiences. Yet the knowledge of these is stored in your mind somewhere. That which you do not hold in your conscious mind at any one moment is your subconscious. »
  • « Philosophy: Who Needs It » (1974), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 7  « Your subconscious is like a computer—more complex a computer than men can build—and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. »
  • « The Comprachichos » (1971), dans Return of the Primitive (New York: Meridian / Penguin Group, 1999), p. 55 : « The subconscious is an integrating mechanism. Man’s conscious mind observes and establishes connections among his experiences; the subconscious integrates the connections and makes them become automatic. For example, the skill of walking is acquired, after many faltering attempts, by the automatization of countless connections controlling muscular movements; once he learns to walk, a child needs no conscious awareness of such problems as posture, balance, length of step, etc.—the mere decision to walk brings the integrated total into his control. »
  • « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 11, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:20:39] : « Strictly speaking, Objectivism does not subscribe to the idea of an unconscious at all. We use the term “subconscious” instead—and that is simply a name for the content of your mind that you are not focused on at any given moment. It is simply a repository for past information or conclusions that you were once conscious of in some form, but that are now stored beneath the threshold of consciousness. There is nothing in the subconscious besides what you acquired by conscious means. The subconscious does perform automatically certain important integrations (sometimes these are correct, sometimes not), but the conscious mind is always able to know what these are (and to correct them, if necessary). The subconscious has no purposes or values of its own, and it does not engage in diabolical manipulations behind the scenes. »
[09:22] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur le sense of life
  • « Philosophy and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 14-15 : »A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence. It sets the nature of a man’s emotional responses and the essence of his character. Long before he is old enough to grasp such a concept as metaphysics, man makes choices, forms value- judgments, experiences emotions and acquires a certain implicit view of life. Every choice and value-judgment implies some estimate of himself and of the world _ around him—most particularly, of his capacity to deal with the world. He may draw conscious conclusions, which may be true or false; or he may remain mentally passive and merely react to events (i.e., merely feel). Whatever the case may be, his subconscious mechanism sums up his psychological activities, integrating his conclusions, reactions or evasions into an emotional sum that establishes a habitual pattern and becomes his automatic response to the world around him. What began as a series of single, discrete conclusions (or evasions) about his own particular problems, becomes a generalized feeling about existence, an implicit metaphysics with the compelling motivational power of a constant, basic emotion—an emotion which is part of all his other emotions and underlies all his experiences. This is a sense of life. »
[11:27] Convictions conscientes et sense of life chez un homme
  • « Philosophy and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 19 : « Philosophy does not replace a man’s sense of life, which continues to function as the automatically integrated sum of his values. […] For many men, the process of transition never takes place: they make no attempt to integrate their knowledge, to acquire any conscious convictions, and are left at the mercy of their inarticulate sense of life as their only guide. For most men, the transition is a tortured and not fully successful process, leading to a fundamental inner conflict—a clash between a man’s conscious convictions and his repressed, unidentified (or only partially identified) sense of life. Very often, the transition is incomplete, as in the case of a man whose convictions are not part of a fully integrated philosophy, but are merely a collection of random, disconnected, often contradictory ideas, and, therefore, are unconvincing to his own mind against the power of his subconscious metaphysics. In some cases, a man’s sense of life is better (closer to the truth) than the kind of ideas he accepts. In other cases, his sense of life is much worse than the ideas he professes to accept but is unable fully to practice. »
  • « Romantic Literature« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 96 : « For instance, I disagree with Hugo’s philosophy almost from beginning to end, and yet his sense of life—his emotional, subconscious view of man and of existence—is closer to Objectivism than that of any other writer. Hugo has a great conflict between his conscious, alleged convictions and his subconscious, true ones—true in the artistic sense, because every man writes from his subconscious sense of life. In some cases, a man’s subconscious values correspond to his conscious, rationally validated values, and he has no conflict. There are such writers, though not many. In most cases, though, a writer’s sense of life and his conscious convictions clash badly. »
[11:52] Le sense of life comme vecteur et source de l’art
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 24-25 : « The emotional response to that painting would be instantaneous, much faster than the viewer’s mind could identify all the reasons involved. The psychological mechanism which produces that response (and which produced the painting) is a man’s sense of life. […] It is the artist’s sense of life that controls and integrates his work, directing the innumerable choices he has to make, from the choice of subject to the subtlest details of style. It is the viewer’s or reader’s sense of life that responds to a work of art by a complex, yet automatic reaction of acceptance and approval, or rejection and condemnation.
    This does not mean that a sense of life is a valid criterion of esthetic merit, either for the artist or the viewer. A sense of life is not infallible. But a sense of life is the source of art, the psychological mechanism which enables man to create a realm such as art. »
[12:09] Idées affichées et sense of life dans une œuvre
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 31 : « The terrible inner conflicts from which artists suffer as much as (or, perhaps, more than) other men are magnified in their work. As an example: Salvador Dali, whose style projects the luminous clarity of a rational psycho-epistemology, while most (though not all) of his subjects project an irrational and revoltingly evil metaphysics. A similar, but less offensive, conflict may be seen in the paintings of Vermeer, who combines a brilliant clarity of style with the bleak metaphysics of Naturalism. »
  • « An Introductory Note to The Man who Laugh » (1967) dans The Objectivist, vol. 6, n° 12, p. 10 : « [T]he conflict between [Hugo’s] conscious ideas and his sense of life, between the thinker and the artist, runs through all his novels and reaches its peak of intensity in this one. Here, his sense of life is the dominant element that overwhelms the rest. »
  • PEIKOFF Leonard, « DIM in Literature » (conférence OCON 2007), enregistrement YouTube [01:23:00] : « An artist can be consistent in his mode of integration while repeatedly contradicting his animating philosophy in his public statements, and even in the themes in his work, such as Dostoevsky. Now when the two elements do clash, however, what counts aesthetically is the sense of life, because that’s what shapes the universe of the novel or the play, and that is what primarily influences the reader. If he gets one kind of world that he’s living in, and then some paragraphs at the end saying it means the exact opposite… it is just forgotten. »

Les branches de l’art

[12:23] Comment déterminer qu’une pratique est un art
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 64 : « What are the valid forms of art—and why these? It can now be answered: the proper forms of art present a selective re-creation of reality in terms needed by man’s cognitive faculty, which includes his entity-perceiving senses, and thus assist the integration of the various elements of a conceptual consciousness. »
[12:58] Principales branches de l’art
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 36 : « Bearing this in mind, consider the nature of the major branches of art, and of the specific physical media they employ. Literature re-creates reality by means of language— Painting, by means of color on a two-dimensional surface—Sculpture, by means of a three-dimensional form made of a solid material. Music employs the sounds produced by the periodic vibrations of a sonorous body, and evokes man’s sense-of-life emotions. Architecture is in a class by itself, because it combines art with a utilitarian purpose and does not re-create reality, but creates a structure for man’s habitation or use, expressing man’s values. (There are also the performing arts, whose medium is the person of the artist; we shall discuss them later.) Now observe the relation of these arts to man’s cognitive faculty: Literature deals with the field of concepts— Painting, with the field of sight—Sculpture, with the combined fields of sight and touch—Music, with the field of hearing. (Architecture, qua art, is close to sculpture: its field is three-dimensional, i.e., sight and touch, but transposed to a grand spatial scale.) […] The relation of literature to man’s cognitive faculty is obvious: literature re-creates reality by means of words, i.e., concepts. But in order to re-create reality, it is the sensory-perceptual level of man’s awareness that literature has to convey conceptually: the reality of concrete, individual men and events, of specific sights, sounds, textures, etc. The so-called visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture) produce concrete, perceptually available entities and make them convey an abstract, conceptual meaning. All these arts are conceptual in essence, all are products of and addressed to the conceptual level of man’s consciousness, and they differ only in their means. Literature starts with concepts and integrates them to percepts—painting, sculpture and architecture start with percepts and integrate them to concepts. »
  • Ibid. p. 64 : « Literature deals with concepts, the visual arts with sight and touch, music with hearing. Each art fulfills the function of bringing man’s concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allowing him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts. »
[14:02] Particularité de la musique
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 41 : « [With other arts,] the pattern is: from perception—to conceptual understanding—to appraisal—to emotion. The pattern of the process involved in music is: from perception—to emotion—to appraisal—to conceptual understanding. Music is experienced as if it had the power to reach man’s emotions directly. »
  • Ibid, p. 42 : « Music cannot tell a story, it cannot deal with concretes, it cannot convey a specific existential phenomenon, such as a peaceful countryside or a stormy sea. The theme of a composition entitled “Spring Song” is not spring, but the emotions which spring evoked in the composer. Even concepts which, intellectually, belong to a complex level of abstraction, such as “peace,” “revolution,” “religion,” are too specific, too concrete to be expressed in music. All that music can do with such themes is convey the emotions of serenity, or defiance, or exaltation. »
  • Ibid, p. 51-52 : « Within the general category of music of equal complexity, it is the emotional element that represents the metaphysical aspect controlling one’s enjoyment. […] The process of integration represents the concretized abstraction of one’s consciousness, the nature of the music represents the concretized abstraction of existence—i.e., a world in which one feels joyous or sad or triumphant or resigned, etc. »
  • Ibid, p. 47-50 : « From the standpoint of psycho-epistemology, I can offer a hypothesis on the nature of man’s response to music, but I urge the reader to remember that it is only a hypothesis. […] [M]usical tones heard in a certain kind of succession produce a different result—the human ear and brain integrate them into a new cognitive experience, into what may be called an auditory entity: a melody. […] Music gives man’s consciousness the same experience as the other arts: a concretization of his sense of life. But the abstraction being concretized is primarily epistemological, rather than metaphysical; the abstraction is man’s consciousness, i.e., his method of cognitive functioning, which he experiences in the concrete form of hearing a specific piece of music. A man’s acceptance or rejection of that music depends on whether it calls upon or clashes with, confirms or contradicts, his mind’s way of working.
[16:00] Particularité de l’architecture
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 36 : « Architecture is in a class by itself, because it combines art with a utilitarian purpose and does not re-create reality, but creates a structure for man’s habitation or use, expressing man’s values. […] (Architecture, qua art, is close to sculpture: its field is three-dimensional, i.e., sight and touch, but transposed to a grand spatial scale.) »
  • « The Visual Arts », interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 15, p. 110 : « Architecture is in a class by itself because, although it is a visual art in one respect, it is part esthetic and part utilitarian. It creates an object, a building, for human use, but according to certain esthetic values. »
  • Lettre à Frank Lloyd Wright du 14 mai 1944, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 3 « Letters to Frank Lloyd Wright », p. 113 : « Your buildings are not designed for sloppy, “homey” living, not for flopping around in bedroom slippers, but for standing straight and making each minute count. I felt, whenever I entered a building of yours, that one could never relax here—relax in the sense most people do all their lives, that is, feel small, mean, slothful and comfortably insignificant. I felt that here one had to be a hero and lead a heroic life. Most people live in a kind of disgusting everyday stupor, and they experience a higher sense of existence only on very rare occasions, if at all. In your buildings one would have to experience it all the time. I think that is the way you build. […] You don’t build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. »
  • TRACINSKI Sherri, « Architecture and Sense of Life » (1998), dans The Intellectual Activist, vol. 12, n° 4, p. 10-11 : « All other art forms recreate some portion of the world—a single human figure, or a two‐dimensional scene on a canvas. Only architecture can create a total environment, one that literally surrounds the viewer. Architecture creates a man‐made, idealized world—an environment created by the architect to fit the kind of life he sees as proper to man. Architecture conveys a view of man indirectly, not by projecting an image of man himself [as sculpture, painting and literature do] but by projecting the proper environment for man to live in. »
[16:37] Les arts performatifs ou interprétatifs
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 55 : « Let us turn now to the performing arts (acting, playing a musical instrument, singing, dancing). In these arts, the medium employed is the person of the artist. His task is not to re-create reality, but to implement the re-creation made by one of the primary arts. This does not mean that the performing arts are secondary in esthetic value or importance, but only that they are an extension of and dependent on the primary arts. Nor does it mean that performers are mere “interpreters”: on the higher levels of his art, a performer contributes a creative element which the primary work could not convey by itself; he becomes a partner, almost a co-creator—if and when he is guided by the principle that he is the means to the end set by the work. »
  • Ibid. p.61 : « Music and/or literature are the base of the performing arts […] The base, in this context, means that primary art which provides the metaphysical element and enables the performance to become a concretization of an abstract view of man. »
  • Ibid. p.63-64 : « Whatever the variety and the vast potential of the performing arts, one must always remember that they are a consequence and an extension of the primary arts—and that the primary arts give them the abstract meaning without which no human product or activity can be classified as art. »
[17:05] L’impossibilité d’inventer de nouvelles branches de l’art
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 64 : « The different branches of art serve to unify man’s consciousness and offer him a coherent view of existence. Whether that view is true or false is not an esthetic matter. The crucially esthetic matter is psycho-epistemological: the integration of a conceptual consciousness. This is the reason why all the arts were born in prehistoric times, and why man can never develop a new form of art. The forms of art do not depend on the content of man’s consciousness, but on its nature—not on the extent of man’s knowledge, but on the means by which he acquires it. (In order to develop a new form of art, man would have to acquire a new sense organ.) The growth of man’s knowledge makes possible an unlimited growth and development of the arts. Scientific discoveries give rise to new subcategories in the various branches of art. But these are variants and subcategories (or combinations) of the same fundamental arts. Such variants require new rules, new methods, new techniques, but not a change of basic principles. »
[17:20] Les arts composites
  • « The Visual Arts », interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 15, p. 114 : « Film is a composite art, made up of an integration of other arts. […] Film combines all other human arts that the medium can employ. Primarily, of course, it is a dramatic medium; therefore, it involves literature. It is presented visually; therefore, it involves painting. It involves sculpture and architecture, in the sense of the three-dimensional projection of sets. It involves acting, which is an interpretive art. It involves music, singing, dancing—any art form can be used in film. A similar art is opera, which combines drama and music, along with acting and singing. But film is a much wider composite; it is a sum of all the other arts. Therefore, potentially, film is probably the greatest of the composite arts. »
[17:39] Les arts appliqués, décoratifs et l’artisanat
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 65-66 : « … furniture, dress design, automobiles, packaging, etc. The commercial art work in ads (or posters or postage stamps) is frequently done by real artists and has greater esthetic value than many paintings, but utilitarian objects cannot be classified as works of art. […] A similar type of confusion exists in regard to the decorative arts. The task of the decorative arts is to ornament utilitarian objects, such as rugs, textiles, lighting fixtures, etc. This is a valuable task, often performed by talented artists, but it is not an art in the esthetic-philosophical meaning of the term. The psycho-epistemological base of the decorative arts is not conceptual, but purely sensory: their standard of value is appeal to the senses of sight and/or touch. Their material is colors and shapes in non-representational combinations conveying no meaning other than visual harmony; the meaning or purpose is concrete and lies in the specific object which they decorate. »
[17:58] La photographie
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 65 : « Is photography an art? The answer is: No. It is a technical, not a creative, skill. Art requires a selective re-creation. A camera cannot perform the basic task of painting: a visual conceptualization, i.e., the creation of a concrete in terms of abstract essentials. The selection of camera angles, lighting or lenses is merely a selection of the means to reproduce various aspects of the given, i.e., of an existing concrete. There is an artistic element in some photographs, which is the result of such selectivity as the photographer can exercise, and some of them can be very beautiful—but the same artistic element (purposeful selectivity) is present in many utilitarian products… […]
    (If it is asked, at this point: But why, then, is a film directar to be regarded as an artist?—the answer is: It is the story that provides an abstract meaning which the film concretizes; without a story, a director is merely a pretentious photographer.) »
[19:09] Sur l’art populaire
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 102-103 : « Popular literature is fiction that does not deal with abstract problems; it takes moral principles as the given, accepting certain generalized, common-sense ideas and values as its base. (Common-sense values and conventional values are not the same thing; the first can be justified rationally, the second cannot. Even though the second may include some of the first, they are justified, not on the ground of reason, but on the ground of social conformity.) Popular fiction does not raise or answer abstract questions; it assumes that man knows what he needs to know in order to live, and it proceeds to show his adventures in living (which is one of the reasons for its popularity among all types of readers, including the problem-laden intellectuals). The distinctive characteristic of popular fiction is the absence of an explicitly ideational element, of the intent to convey intellectual information (or misinformation). Detective, adventure, science-fiction novels and Westerns belong, for the most part, to the category of popular fiction. The best writers of this category come close to the Scott-Dumas group: their emphasis is on action, but their heroes and villains are abstract projections, and a loosely generalized view of moral values, of a struggle between good and evil, motivates the action. »
  • « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, Objective Communication (séminaire, 1980), leçon 1, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:03:25] : « A work that would be regarded as serious literature would have a serious, interesting theme. It will be taking up philosophical, ethical, political questions, psychological studies. It would be a story about human beings that have, not necessarily didactic message, but a message of some kind that has something to say of a serious nature regarding human life. […] Whereas popular literature will be superficial. That’s the main distinction. It is that it would have no serious idea, no serious theme and at best would have good plot. »
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (1962), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 120 : « Now consider a curious paradox: the same estheticians and intellectuals who advocate collectivism, with the subordination of all values and of everyone’s life to the rule of “the masses,” with art as the voice of “the people”—these same men are resentfully antagonistic toward all popular values in art. They engage in virulent denunciations of the mass media, of the so-called “commercial” producers or publishers who happen to attract large audiences and to please the public. They demand government subsidies for the artistic ventures which “the people” do not enjoy and do not choose to support voluntarily. They feel that any financially successful, that is, popular, work of art is automatically worthless, while any unpopular failure is automatically great—provided it is unintelligible. Anything that can be understood, they feel, is vulgar and primitive; only inarticulate language, smears of paint and the noise of radio static are civilized, sophisticated and profound. »
[19:47] Écrivains populaires stylistiquement supérieurs aux écrivains modernes dits « sérieux »
  • « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, Objective Communication (séminaire, 1980), leçon 1, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:04:34] : « Today, however, popular literature is so much better than “serious literature,” from every aspect I mentioned. […] Popular literature, specifically detective stories, are much more serious and better written than what passes for serious literature today. »
  • Voir aussi l’analyse comparative entre le style de Mickey Spillane et de Thomas Wolfe dans « Basic Principles of Literature » (1968), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 86-88 ; ou : « Style II: Descriptions of Nature and of New York » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 9, p. 132-137.

Le romantisme

[20:25] Le romantisme comme le plus grand accomplissement
  • Introduction de The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), p. viii : « I made it my task to learn what made Romanticism, the greatest achievement in art history, possible and what destroyed it. »
  • Interview d’Ayn Rand pour The Phil Donahue Show (1980), enregistrement YouTube « Ayn Rand Phil Donahue Interview Part 5 of 5 » [06:04] : « … Romanticism is the best school of art. The most justifiable, but not the only one. »
[20:36] Les définitions inessentielles du romantisme
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (interview donnée en 1962), enregistrement YouTube [01:02:00] : « All the various theories which you have mentioned are not untrue. They are certainly wrong as definitions, but there is an element of truth in all of them—and more than that, it is an element that comes from the same essential. What these theories are guilty of is that they are approaching the issue and defining it by means of non-essentials. The subject under discussion is Romanticism. Each one of the theories you mentioned takes some aspect which is true of the Romantic school, but a superficial aspect—one of the attributes of the object to be defined, but an inessential attribute, meaning an attribute which is not fundamental and which is derived from something more fundamental, of which it is only a derivative. There is a cause underlying all the particular aspects which these various theories have chosen, and it is that cause that we consider definitive. […] And what all these theories have in common is that they gropingly, inaccurately, are dealing with the problem that romanticism has something to do with the question of values. The common denominator in all these theories is that the Romantic school of writing is concerned with values. »
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 97-98 : « What the Romanticists brought to art was the primacy of values, an element that had been missing in the stale, arid, thirdand fourth-hand (and rate) repetitions of the Classicists’ formula-copying. Values (and value-judgments) are the source of emotions; a great deal of emotional intensity was projected in the work of the Romanticists and in the reactions of their audiences, as well as a great deal of color, imagination, originality, excitement and all the other consequences of a value-oriented view of life. This emotional element was the most easily perceivable characteristic of the new movement and it was taken as its defining characteristic, without deeper inquiry. […] The Romanticists saw their cause primarily as a battle for their right to individuality and—unable to grasp the deepest metaphysical justification of their cause, unable to identify their values in terms of reason—they fought for individuality in terms of feelings, surrendering the banner of reason to their enemies. »
[21:25] Ce qu’est le romantisme
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 91-92 : « Romanticism is a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition. […] If man possesses volition, then the crucial aspect of his life is his choice of values—if he chooses values, then he must act to gain and/or keep them—if so, then he must set his goals and engage in purposeful action to achieve them. »
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 97 : « Such issues as the fact that the primacy of values in human life is not an irreducible primary, that it rests on man’s faculty of volition, and, therefore, that the Romanticists, philosophically, were the champions of volition (which is the root of values) and not of emotions (which are merely the consequences)—were issues to be defined by philosophers, who defaulted in regard to esthetics as they did in regard to every other crucial aspect of the nineteenth century. »
  • « Romantic Literature« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 95 : « Romantic literature accepts a formulation by Aristotle as its basic principle: the role of a fiction writer is to present things, not as they are, but as they might be and ought to be. It is literature based on the idea that man has volition, and is able to direct the course of his life and achieve his values. »
[22:52] Aristote et la supériorité de la fiction sur l’histoire
  • ARISTOTE, Poétique (trad. Pierre Destrée, 2014), chapitre 9, [1451a35] : « De ce que nous avons dit, il ressort clairement aussi que la fonction du poète n’est pas de raconter ce qui est effectivement arrivé, mais les événements tels qu’ils pourraient arriver, c’est-à-dire ceux qui sont possibles selon la vraisemblance ou la nécessité. En effet, l’historien et le poète ne se différencient pas en ce qu’ils s’expriment en vers ou en prose ; on pourrait mettre les livres d’Hérodote en vers : ils n’en seraient pas moins de l’histoire qu’en prose. Ils se différencient bien plutôt en ce que le premier raconte ce qui est effectivement arrivé, tandis que le second raconte les événements tels qu’ils pourraient arriver. C’est pourquoi la poésie est plus philosophique et a plus de valeur que l’histoire. En effet, la poésie raconte les événements davantage dans leur généralité ; l’histoire, les événements dans leur particularité. »
[23:07] Le romantisme comme école conceptuelle
  • « Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition » (1968) dans The Fountainhead (New York: Signet, 1952, ouvrage original publié en 1943), p. v : « Longevity—predominantly, though not exclusively—is the prerogative of a literary school which is virtually non-existent today: Romanticism. This is not the place for a dissertation on the nature of Romantic fiction, so let me state […] only that Romanticism is the conceptual school of art. It deals, not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental, universal problems and values of human existence. It does not record or photograph; it creates and projects. It is concerned—in the words of Aristotle—not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be. »
[23:45] Le romantisme n’est pas le symbolisme
  • « Special Forms of Literature » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 11, p. 172-173 : « Symbolism is the concretization of an idea in an object or person representing that idea. An example of symbolic writing is morality plays. Just as fairy tales present the good fairy and the bad fairy, so morality plays present moral abstractions by means of human figures like an embodied Justice or an embodied Virtue. The figures do not represent characteristics [as in Romantic fiction]; they represent the abstractions themselves as a kind of Platonic archetype. »
  • Lettre à Alan Collins du 19 juillet 1946, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 290 🙂 : « My characters are never symbols; they are merely men in sharper focus than the audience can see with unaided sight. What gives them the appearance of symbolism is not their characterization, but the circumstances through which they move and which bring out their wider significance, so that they become not merely specific men, but also representatives of all men of that kind. […] The symbolism in my characters is something added to the characterization, not substituted for it. »
[24:15] Le romantisme a donné ses lettres de noblesse au roman
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (interview donnée en 1962), enregistrement YouTube [00:22:52] : « The greatest artistic innovation of the 19th century was a new literary form: the novel. Prior to the late 18th century, the novel did not exist. What did exist in literature was only plays, poems and sagas or chronicles. This lasts were fictionalized biographies of historical figures or of legendary heroes and gods. Some historians may regard certain earlier works for instance Don Quixote as novels, but such works are closer to chronicles than to novels in literary form. […] The concept of fiction, in the full sense of the word, was impossible. Men as a being of free will did not appear in literature until the 19th century, and the novel was his proper literary form. The great new art movement of the 19th century was Romanticism, and the romantic novel was its greatest expression. »
[24:30] Développement de l’intrigue
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 91-92 : « If man possesses volition, then the crucial aspect of his life is his choice of values—if he chooses values, then he must act to gain and/or keep them—if so, then he must set his goals and engage in purposeful action to achieve them. The literary form expressing the essence of such action is the plot. (A plot is a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax.) »
  • « Romantic Literature« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 95 : « Romantic literature presents life in terms of man’s pursuit of values and his dealing with value-conflicts— not conflicts between a helpless creature, which is man, and some sorts of external forces. The formal expression of such an approach is a plot. The defining characteristic of Romantic literature is a basic plot structure. »
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (interview donnée en 1962), enregistrement YouTube [01:21:47] : « My sentence was that the new artistic form of the 19th century was the Romantic novel, and plot was its proudest distinction. That could give the impression that the novelty consisted of the plot. No, what I meant was that the Romantic novel was the new literary form, but within that category, of the many literary aspects that one could stress or that pertain to a novel, it is the aspect of plot that the Romanticists particularly featured, for the reasons I explained in my lecture: as an expression of man’s freedom of choice. »
[24:40] Ce qu’est une intrigue
  • « Basic Principles of Literature » (1968), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 5, p. 73-74 : « A plot is a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax. The word “purposeful” in this definition has two applications: it applies to the author and to the characters of a novel. It demands that the author devise a logical structure of events, a sequence in which every major event is connected with, determined by and proceeds from the preceding events of the story—a sequence in which nothing is irrelevant, arbitrary or accidental, so that the logic of the events leads inevitably to a final resolution. Such a sequence cannot be constructed unless the main characters of the novel are engaged in the pursuit of same purpose—unless they are motivated by some goals that direct their actions. In real life, only a process of final causation—i.e., the process of choosing a goal, then taking the steps to achieve it—can give logical continuity, coherence and meaning to a man’s actions. Only men striving to achieve a purpose can move through a meaningful series of events. »
[25:07] Pourquoi Rand favorise t-elle le romantisme
  • Atlas Shrugged (35th Anniversary Edition, New York, Dutton, 1992 ; œuvre originale de 1957), p. 1020-1021 : « …as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul—that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is born able to create, but must create by choice… »
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 4 : « When we come to normative abstractions—to the task of defining moral principles and projecting what man ought to be—the psycho-epistemological process required is still harder. The task demands years of study— and the results are almost impossible to communicate without the assistance of art. An exhaustive philosophical treatise defining moral values, with a long list of virtues to be practiced, will not do it; it will not convey what an ideal man would be like and how he would act: no mind can deal with so immense a sum of abstractions. […] Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal. […] The basic purpose of art is not to teach, but to show—to hold up to man a concretized image of his nature and his place in the universe. »
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 28 : « Since man lives by reshaping his physical background to serve his purpose, since he must first define and then create his values—a rational man needs a concretized projection of these values, an image in whose likeness he will re-shape the world and himself. Art gives him that image; it gives him the experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant goals. »
[26:22] Citation de Rand sur l’art comme carburant
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 28-29 : « Since a rational man’s ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement of values is a lifelong process—and the higher the values, the harder the struggle—he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved. It is like a moment of rest, a moment to gain fuel to move farther. Art gives him that fuel; the pleasure of contemplating the objectified reality of one’s own sense of life is the pleasure of feeling what it would be like to live in one’s ideal world. The importance of that experience is not in what man learns from it, but in that he experiences it. The fuel is not a theoretical principle, not a didactic “message,” but the life-giving fact of experiencing a moment of metaphysical joy—a moment of love for existence. »
[27:59] Romantisme et abstractions fondamentales
  • « Romanticism versus Naturalism », interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 101 : « Romanticism deals with universal principles of morality and of human psychology, which apply to man as such—to a metaphysical concept of man in any era and in any circumstances. »
  • « Introduction to Ninety-Three » (1962), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 149 : « [A Romantic’s] vision is always focused on man—on the fundamentals of man’s nature, on those problems and those aspects of his character which apply to any age and any country. »
  • « Characterization » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 73 : « A Naturalist tells you that men act in a certain way, but not why they do so; or (if he is a serious Naturalist) he gives some indication, but a comparatively superficial one. He always stops short of any fundamental “Why?”—of any issue pertaining to all human beings. He never touches the universals of human behavior, because to do so would be contrary to the premise that men are determined. There is no place in the philosophy of determinism for wide, universal abstractions that govern human behavior and among which men have the power to choose. The Romantic method, by contrast, goes down to fundamental abstractions. This is not to say that every Romanticist does so; but every Romanticist goes as deep as his personal ambition or his subject requires. The essence of the Romantic method is to present the universals motivating human action. »
[28:41] Confusion des critiques entre le thème et l’arrière-plan
  • « Introduction to Ninety-Three » (1962), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 149-150 : « Two of Hugo’s modern biographers refer to [Ninety-Three] as follows: Matthew Josephson, in Victor Hugo, mentions it disapprovingly as a “historical romance” with “idealized characters”; André Maurois, in Olympio ou la Vie de Victor Hugo, lists a number of Hugo’s personal connections with the setting of the story (such as the fact that Hugo’s father fought in the Vendée, on the republican side), then remarks: “The dialogue [of the novel] is theatrical. But the French Revolution had been theatrical and dramatic. Its heroes had struck sublime poses and had held them to the death.” (Which is a purely Naturalist approach or attempt at justification.) The fact is that Ninety-Three is is not a novel about the French Revolution. To a Romanticist, a background is a background, not a theme. His vision is always focused on man—on the fundamentals of man’s nature, on those problems and those aspects of his character which apply to any age and any country. […] Hugo’s story is not devised as a means of presenting the French Revolution; the French Revolution is used as a means of presenting his story. »
  • We the Living (60th Anniversary ed. New York : Signet / New American Library, 1996), « Foreword », p. xi : « We the Living is not a story about Soviet Russia in 1925. It is a story about Dictatorship, any dictatorship, anywhere, at any time, whether it be Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or—which this novel might do its share in helping to prevent—a socialist America. »
  • Voir aussi sur ce blog : « Réponse aux critiques de L’Observateur sur The Fountainhead« .
[29:01] Le romantisme comme échappatoire
  • « The Goal of My Writing » (1963) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 11, p. 160-161 : « Consider the significance of the fact that the Naturalists call Romantic art an “escape.” Ask yourself what sort of metaphysics—what view of life—that designation confesses. An escape—from what? If the projection of value-goals—the projection of an improvement on the given, the known, the immediately available—is an “escape,” then medicine is an “escape” from disease, agriculture is an “escape’” from hunger, knowledge is an “escape” from ignorance, ambition is an “escape” from sloth, and life is an “escape’” from death. If so, then a hard-core realist is a vermin-eaten brute who sits motionless in a mud puddle, contemplates a pigsty and whines that “such is life.” If that is realism, then I am an escapist. So was Aristotle. So was Christopher Columbus. »
  • « Romanticism versus Naturalism », interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 14, p. 107 : « What do today’s thinkers believe Romanticism is an escape from? Well, it is an escape—an escape from being concrete-bound, although that is not what they mean. They think Romanticism is simply an escape from sordidness, because they see Naturalism as presenting the seamiest and lowest part of life, as if nothing better ever existed. If one writes—even in a Naturalist novel, though that is rare—about something good or valuable in human life, a true Naturalist will regard that as fantasy. Since he judges life statistically, reality to him is whatever is the numerically dominant type of man. Anything higher than the average is thus an escape. From what? From the gutter, from the mean, from the low. In fact, it is Naturalism that is an escape—an escape from abstractions, an escape from the necessity of seeing life from a broader perspective than the range of the immediate moment. »
[29:35] La fonction de l’art reste métaphysique, non éthique
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 10-11 : « It is important to stress, however, that even though moral values are inextricably involved in art, they are involved only as a consequence, not as a causal determinant: the primary focus of art is metaphysical, not ethical. Art is not the “handmaiden”’ of morality, its basic purpose is not to educate, to reform or to advocate anything. The concretization of a moral ideal is not a textbook on how to become one. The basic purpose of art is not to teach, but to show—to hold up to man a concretized image of his nature and his place in the universe. Any metaphysical issue will necessarily have an enormous influence on man’s conduct and, therefore, on his ethics; and, since every art work has a theme, it will necessarily convey some conclusion, some “message,” to its audience. But that influence and that “message” are only secondary consequences. Art is not the means to any didactic end. This is the difference between a work of art and a morality play or a propaganda poster. »
[30:07] Romantisme ne signifie pas monde idyllique
  • « Theme and Plot » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 22 : « To illustrate the achievement of a purpose, you have to show men overcoming obstacles. This statement pertains strictly to writers. Metaphysically—in reality—one does not need obstacles in order to achieve a purpose. But you as a writer need to dramatize purpose, i.e., you have to isolate the particular meaning that you want your events to illustrate—by presenting it in a stressed action form. For instance, in The Fountainhead I show the career of a creative, independent architect. It is possible (although not probable) that in real life he would immediately find the right clients and achieve great success without any opposition. But that would be completely wrong artistically. Since my purpose is to show that a man of creative independence will achieve his goal regardless of any opposition, a story in which there is no opposition would not dramatize my message. I have to show the hero in a difficult struggle—and the worse I can make it, the better dramatically. I have to devise the hardest obstacles possible, and those of greatest significance to the hero. »
  • « Cyrano de Bergerac« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 16, p. 118 : « [O]n the stage, you could not possibly present a man of integrity if there were no events that tested him. In order to isolate the abstraction that represents the theme, Rostand had to present his hero in the worst conceivable situations. He had to confront Cyrano with every kind of defeat, existentially, in order to show that the hero preserves his integrity. »
  • « Special Forms of Literature » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 11, p. 174 : « The justification for presenting tragic endings in literature is to show […] that the human spirit can survive even the worst of circumstances—that the worst that the chance events of nature or the evil of other people can do will not defeat the proper human spirit. […] Victor Hugo, who usually has unhappy endings, always presents his characters’ suffering somewhat in the way that I do in We the Living. Even if a particular character meets with disaster, the tragedy and pain are never complete; they are not, metaphysically, the final word on man. »
  • « The Goal of My Writing » (1963) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 11, p. 160 : « Misery, disease, disaster, evil, all the negatives of human existence, are proper subjects of study in life, for the purpose of understanding and correcting them—but are not proper subjects of contemplation for contemplation’s sake. In art, and in literature, these negatives are worth re-creating only in relation to some positive, as a foil, as a contrast, as a means of stressing the positive— but not as an end in themselves. »
[30:52] Victor Hugo comme le plus grand des romantiques
  • « Introduction to Ninety-Three » (1962), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 10, p. 147 : « The nineteenth century saw both the start and the culmination of an illustrious line of great Romantic novelists. And the greatest of these was Victor Hugo… »
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (interview donnée en 1962), enregistrement YouTube [01:10:18] : « I am sure all theorists would agree that Victor Hugo is a Romantic, that he belongs to the Romantic school (and is in fact the greatest representative of that school). »
[31:01] Aspect romantique de Dostoïevski
  • MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (New York, New American Library / Penguin Group USA Inc., 2005), « 4: Esthetics, Art, and Artists », p. 197 : « Do you consider Dostoyevsky a naturalist or a romanticist? — He’s in between—though essentially he’s a romanticist. He’s “in between” only in this sense: what he presents is the evil; he never successfully presented a hero. He belongs to the romantic school on two counts: (1) plot structure, and (2) the moralistic attitude— that is, he presents men as volitional beings. He never suggests that his villains couldn’t help it (though he doesn’t preach how they could have helped it). His whole approach is: this is the kind of depravity that man should not become. There is always a “should”; in that sense he’s a romantic. »
  • « Romantic Literature« , interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 13, p. 99 : « [W]e can learn a lot from Dostoevsky, whom I would classify as a Romantic. He presents the negative, but from a strongly moralistic standpoint. Dostoevsky presents man as he might be and ought not to be, and he makes very clear that man ought not to be the type of character his novels depict. »
  • PEIKOFF Leonard, The DIM Hypothesis (New York: New American Library, 2012), Part II, chap. 5, p. 91 : « I should mention in passing that Dostoevsky—a negative Romanticist, if you will—expresses moral idealism by presenting and denouncing what ought not to be. »
[31:25] Une œuvre romantique n’est pas forcément meilleure qu’une œuvre non romantique
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 99 : « The (implicit) standards of Romanticism are so demanding that in spite of the abundance of Romantic writers at the time of its dominance, this school has produced very few pure, consistent Romanticists of the top rank. »
  • Ibid. p. 110 : « There were several reasons why Naturalism outlasted Romanticism, even if not for long. Chief among them is the fact that Naturalism’s standards are much less demanding. A third-rate Naturalist may still have some perceptive observations to offer; a third-rate Romanticist has nothing. »
  • Ibid. p. 112 : « [A]t Naturalism’s height, the movement included writers of genuine literary talent, particularly in America. Its best representative is Sinclair Lewis, whose novels display a perceptive, critical, first-rate intelligence at work. The best of Naturalism’s contemporary survivors is John O’Hara, who combines a sensitive intelligence with a beautifully disciplined style. »
  • « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 11, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:32:11] : « Isn’t a work of art that inspires a rational man to achieve rational values greater than a work of art that brillantly illustrates an improper sense of life? Yes, if their aesthetics means are approximately equal. You cannot here measure to an inch or half an ounce who is a better stylist. But if we assume, just as a principle, that there is two artists who are equally good in their style, in their “how”, in the means, but one presents something great and inspiring, and the other one something bitter and malevolent, then the first would be greater, yes. But you’d have to judge them esthetically first. »
  • Voir sur ce blog : « Équivoque sur l’art romantique« .
[33:14] Sur Vermeer
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 31 : « A similar, but less offensive, conflict may be seen in the paintings of Vermeer, who combines a brilliant clarity of style with the bleak metaphysics of Naturalism. »
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 38-39 : « The greatest of all artists, Vermeer, devoted his paintings to a single theme: light itself. […] One might wish (and I do) that Vermeer had chosen better subjects to express his theme, but to him, apparently, the subjects were only the means to his end. What his style projects is a concretized image of an immense, non-visual abstraction: the psycho-epistemology of a rational mind. It projects clarity, discipline, confidence, purpose, power—a universe open to man. When one feels, looking at a Vermeer painting: “This is my view of life,” the feeling involves much more than mere visual perception. »

Classicisme, naturalisme et modernisme

[33:55] Le classicisme
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 96 : « Classicism (an example of a much deeper superficiality) was a school that had devised a set of arbitrary, concretely detailed rules purporting to represent the final and absolute criteria of esthetic value. In literature, these rules consisted of specific edicts, loosely derived from the Greek (and French) tragedies, which prescribed every formal aspect of a play (such as the unity of time, place and action) down to the number of acts and the number of verses permitted to a character in every act. Some of that stuff was based on Aristotle’s esthetics and can serve as an example of what happens when concrete-bound mentalities, seeking to by-pass the responsibility of thought, attempt to transform abstract principles into concrete prescriptions and to replace creation with imitation. (For an example of Classicism that survived well into the twentieth century, I refer you to the architectural dogmas represented by Howard Roark’s antagonists in The Fountainhead.) Even though the Classicists had no answer to why their rules were to be accepted as valid (except the usual appeal to tradition, to scholarship and to the prestige of antiquity), this school was regarded as the representative of reason. (!) »
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 30 : « Bad art is, predominantly, the product of imitation, of secondhand copying, not of creative expression. »
  • Lettre à Gerald Loeb du 23 avril 1944, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 4 « Return to Hollywood », p. 133 : « Buildings do need beauty and ornament for their human appeal—but why must the ornament be an eternal repetition of and variation upon old Greek trimmings? There is such a field open for true creative originality. »
  • « Plot », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 2 « The Fountainhead« , chap. 6, entrée du 25 juin 1938, p. 189 : « Why do you think the Greek style beautiful? Just because your grandfather did and told you so, and his grandfather, and millions before him? I am a man. I choose a work to do. I must do the very best possible to me. I am the sole judge of that best. If I give up that right of valuing, I might as well give up the right to all thought. If I think, I value. I alone. How do I know who is right among the others? I can only judge of what is right to me, for me. […] The artist works as he alone pleases. »
  • PEIKOFF Leonard, Discovering Great Plays (Irvine, CA: The Ayn Rand Institute, 2017), chap. 3 « Le Cid«  (1993), p. 94-95 : « Classicism consisted of concrete rules—usually applied to buildings, theater, music—allegedly taken from the Ancients, and rules that had to be obeyed no matter what the subject of theme. You know that as far as the standards of art are concerned, philosophically there are three different approaches. There’s the subjectivist who says, “There are no rules, anything goes, whatever you feel.” There’s the Objectivist who says, “Art has to be created and judged by abstract principles, which have to be defended by the essential nature and role of art, but they have to be applied within the context of the theme and the subject.” And then, of course, there is the intrinsicist in art, who says, “There are specific rules derived from authorities, apart from context, apart from any discussion of the nature or purpose of art.” It’s like the Ten Commandments of esthetics. »
[35:30] Le naturalisme
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (1962), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 117 : « Man’s new enemy, in art, was Naturalism. Naturalism rejected the concept of volition and went back to a view of man as a helpless creature determined by forces beyond his control; only now the new ruler of man’s destiny was held to be society. The Naturalists proclaimed that values have no power and no place, neither in human life nor in literature, that writers must present men “as they are,” which meant: must record whatever they happen to see around them—that they must not pronounce value-judgments nor project abstractions, but must content themselves with a faithful transcription, a carbon copy, of any existing concretes. This was a return to the literary principle of the chronicle—but since a novel was to be an invented chronicle, the novelist was faced with the problem of what to use as his standard of selection. When values are declared to be impossible, how is one to know what to record, what to regard as important or significant? Naturalism solved the problem by substituting statistics for a standard of value. That which could be claimed to be typical of a large number of men, in any given geographical area or period of time, was regarded as metaphysically significant and worthy of being recorded. That which was rare, unusual, exceptional, was regarded as unimportant and unreal. Just as the new schools of philosophy became progressively dedicated to the negation of philosophy, so Naturalism was dedicated to the negation of art. Instead of presenting a metaphysical view of man and of existence, the Naturalists presented a journalistic view. In answer to the question: “What is man?”—they said: “This is what the village grocers are, in the south of France, in the year 1887,” or: “This is what the inhabitants of the slums are, in New York, in 1921,” or: “These are the folks next door.” »
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 93 : « If man’s character and the course of his life are the product of unknown (or unknowable) forces, then, in a literary work, both the characterizations and the events are not to be invented by the author, but are to be copied from such particular characters and events as he has observed. Since he denies the existence of any effective motivational principle in human psychology, he cannot create his characters conceptually. He can only observe the people he meets, as he observes inanimate objects, and reproduce them—in the implicit hope that some clue to the unknown forces controlling human destiny may be discovered in such reproductions. »
  • Ibid. p. 109 : « The contradictions inherent in determinism were obvious in this movement from the start. One does not read fiction except on the implicit premise of volition—i.e., on the premise that some element (some abstraction) of the fiction story is applicable to oneself, that one will learn, discover or contemplate something of value and that this experience will make a difference. If one were to accept the deterministic premise fully and literally—if one were to believe that the characters of a fiction story are as distant and irrelevant to oneself as the unknowable inhabitants of another galaxy and that they cannot affect one’s life in any way whatever, since neither they nor the reader have any power of choice—one would not be able to read beyond the first chapter. Nor would one be able to write. Psychologically, the whole of the Naturalist movement rode on the premise of volition as on an unidentified, subconscious “stolen concept.” »
[37:11] Classicisme et naturalisme ne représentent pas la raison
  • « What is Romanticism? » (1969), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 6, p. 96 : « Even though the Classicists had no answer to why their rules were to be accepted as valid (except the usual appeal to tradition, to scholarship and to the prestige of antiquity), this school was regarded as the representative of reason. (!) Such were the roots of one of the grimmest ironies in cultural history: the early attempts to define the nature of Romanticism declared it to be an esthetic school based on the primacy of emotions—as against the champions of the primacy of reason, which were the Classicists (and, later, the Naturalists). In various forms, this definition has persisted to our day. It is an example of the intellectually disastrous consequences of definitions by non-essentials—and an example of the penalty one pays for a non-philosophical approach to cultural phenomena. »
[37:45] Le modernisme
  • « Literature as an Art Form » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 2, p. 10-11 : « Since all art is communication, there can be nothing more viciously contradictory than the idea of nonobjective art. […] The “nonobjective” is that which is dependent only on the individual subject, not on any standard of outside reality, and which is therefore incommunicable to others. […] A nonobjective artist, whether a painter or a writer, is counting on the existence of objective art—and using it in order to destroy it. Take a nonobjective painter. He creates some blobs of paint and proclaims that they are an expression of his subconscious, that they cannot be defined in any other terms, and that either you understand their meaning or you do not. Then he hangs them in a gallery. What does his work have in common with real art, which by definition represents recognizable physical objects? Only that it is hung on a wall. He has switched the definition of painting to “a piece of canvas in a frame.” The art world laughed at the first nonobjective paintings—and today such stuff is practically all that is produced. The result is the destruction of art as a meaningful activity. »
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 67-68 : « Such attempts, however, can be classified as anti-art for the following reason: the essence of art is integration, a kind of super-integration in the sense that art deals with man’s widest abstractions, his metaphysics, and thus expands the power of man’s consciousness. The notion of “color symphonies”’ is a trend in the opposite direction: it is an attempt to disintegrate man’s consciousness _ and reduce it to a pre-perceptual level by breaking up percepts into mere sensations. […] Disintegration is the keynote and goal of modern art—the disintegration of man’s conceptual faculty, and the retrogression of an adult mind to the state of a mewling infant. To reduce man’s consciousness to the level of sensations, with no capacity to integrate them, is the intention behind the reducing of language to grunts, of literature to “moods,” of painting to smears, of sculpture to slabs, of music to noise »
  • PEIKOFF Leonard, « Modernism and Madness » (conférence donnée en 1993), enregistrement YouTube [00:46:42] : « …the essence of modernism as a cultural orientation is pure primacy of consciousness. »
  • « The Argument from Intimidation » (1964), dans The Virtue of Selfishness (op. cit.), chap. 19, p. 139 : « As an example of an entire field of activity based on nothing but the Argument from Intimidation, I give you modern art—where, in order to prove that they do possess the special insight possessed only by the mystic “elite,” the populace are trying to surpass one another in loud exclamations on the splendor of some bare (but smudged) piece of canvas. »
[39:16] Ne pas être classiciste avec les courants artistiques eux-mêmes
  • MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), « 4: Esthetics, Art, and Artists », p. 199-200 : « Don’t be a classicist. Don’t set standards pertaining to romanticism and others pertaining to naturalism, and make them rigid absolutes, so that to be romantic, a work must have plot, free will, and so on, and to be naturalism, it must have determinism, slow movement, and so forth. That’s not true. You cannot classify novels that rigidly. Any number of crossbreedings and mixed premises might not fall into either category. What you can say is that the (implicit) premise of free will and the purposeful progression of events (a plot) are the distinguishing characteristics of romantic literature, whereas a plotless story that concentrates on characterization and the statistical is deterministic and therefore naturalistic. Those are the extremes. Every story has some elements of both—in the details. […] In every work of literature, you’ll find elements that, taken out of context, could belong to either school. […] Classify a work of literature by the overall metaphysical view presented in the total work. Never hold out for one element—not even plot. »

Le jugement esthétique

[40:04] Le goût personnel n’est pas un critère
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (interview donnée en 1962), enregistrement YouTube [00:19:29] : « [An esthetician or any man who attemps to pass judgment on art] must learn to grasp the abstractions of values, metaphysics, sense of life, as apart from his particular values, metaphysics, and sense of life, then, assess an artist’s work in relation to the artists purpose, by a conscious rational judgment not by a blind emotional reaction of liking or disliking. Some artworks will always have a greater personal meaning for him than other works of equal or even greater artistic merit. That personal meaning is the response of one’s own sense of life to that of the artist and it represents one’s real enjoyment of art. But qua esthetician one must be able to identify and to evaluate the work of an artist qua artist: apart from and regardless of his philosophical ideas. […] For instance, one may dislike the subject of a painting but admire the skill and mastery of the artists style. One may appreciate a writer style while disliking or opposing the content of his story his ideas and his sense of life. One may appreciate the “how” of an art work while disapproving of the “what”. »
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 32-33 : « A sense of life is the source of art, but it is not the sole qualification of an artist or of an esthetician, and it is not a criterion of esthetic judgment. Emotions are not tools of cognition. Esthetics is a branch of philosophy—and just as a philosopher does not approach any other branch of his science with his feelings or emotions as his criterion of judgment, so he cannot do it in the field of esthetics. A sense of life is not sufficient professional equipment. An esthetician—as well as any man who attempts to evaluate art works—must be guided by more than an emotion. […] Since art is a philosophical composite, it is not a contradiction to say: “This is a great work of art, but I don’t like it,”—provided one defines the exact meaning of that statement: the first part refers to a purely esthetic appraisal, the second to a deeper philosophical level which includes more than esthetic values. »
[40:37] Une grande œuvre n’a pas à être ennuyeuse
  • Three Plays (New York: Signet, 2005), « Introduction », p. 9-10 : « This was my first (but not last) encounter with the literary manifestation of the mind-body dichotomy that dominates today’s culture: the split between the “serious” and the “entertaining”—the belief that if a literary work is “serious,” it must bore people to death; and if it is “entertaining,” it must not communicate anything of importance. (Which means that “the good” has to be painful, and that pleasure has to be mindlessly low-grade.) »
  • « Notes While Writing: 1947-1952 », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 4 « Atlas Shrugged« , chap. 13, entrée du 28 août 1949, p. 603 : « The idea that “art” and “entertainment” are opposites—that art is serious and dull, while entertainment is empty and stupid, but enjoyable—is the result of the non-human, altruistic morality. That which is good must be unpleasant. That which is enjoyable is sinful. Pleasure is an indulgence of a low order, to be apologized for. The serious is the performance of a duty, unpleasant and, therefore, uplifting. If a work of art examines life seriously, it must necessarily be unpleasant and unexciting, because such is the nature of life for man. An entertaining, enjoyable play cannot possibly be true to the deeper essence of life, it must be superficial, since life is not to be enjoyed. »
[41:01] Jugement esthétique vs jugement idéologique
  • « Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 30 : « The truth or falsehood of a given artist’s philosophy, as such, is not an esthetic matter; it may affect a given viewer’s enjoyment of his work, but it does not negate its esthetic merit. »
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (interview donnée en 1962), enregistrement YouTube [00:19:29] : « [Q]ua esthetician one must be able to identify and to evaluate the work of an artist qua artist: apart from and regardless of his philosophical ideas. That is: the technical professional mastery with which an artist uses his means to achieve his ends, to project his view of life. […] One may appreciate a writer style while disliking or opposing the content of his story, his ideas and his sense of life. One may appreciate a writer style while disliking or opposing the content of his story his ideas and his sense of life. One may appreciate the “how” of an art work while disapproving of the “what”. »
  • « The Visual Arts », interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 15, p. 110 : « We judge a work of art, not by the philosophy it expresses, but by how well the artist has expressed a certain view, whatever it might be, through the means of his particular art. For example, when we judge a painting, we do not say that a painting with the right philosophy is superior to a painting with whose philosophy we may not agree. In judging art, we are talking about the expression of a philosophy, not the philosophy itself. We judge a painting by identifying how well the painter has conveyed his sense of life by the means applicable to his art—that is, in terms of paint applied to a two-dimensional surface. Has he projected a distinguishable, consistent sense of life, and how well has he done so? How appropriate are his means to his end? »
[42:15] Le popularité ou l’impopularité n’est pas un critère
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (1962), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 120 : « The popularity or unpopularity, the box-office success or failure, of a work of art is not, of course, a criterion of esthetic merit. No value—esthetic, philosophical or moral—can be established by counting noses; fifty million Frenchmen can be as wrong as one. But while a crude “philistine,” who takes financial success as proof of artistic merit, can be regarded merely as a mindless parasite on art—what is one to think of the standards, motives and intentions of those who take financial failure as the proof of artistic merit? If the snobbery of mere financial success is reprehensible, what is the meaning of a snobbery of failure? »
  • Lettre à Gerald Loeb du 3 juin 1944, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 4 « Return to Hollywood », p. 144 : « [I]n material things, true worth is demonstrable. A car is good if it runs well. In the field of art—this cannot be done. There are no obvious standards. Oh yes, there are objective standards, too—but not obvious and not immediately nor easily perceived by all. Here, public taste is no criterion at all. Not one way or the other. If a book sells—it does not prove that it is good. Nor that it is bad. It proves exactly nothing—as far as the actual, intrinsic merit of the book is concerned. »
[42:45] Le principe d’évaluation aristotélicien
  • ARISTOTE, Les Politiques, (Flammarion, trad. Pierre Pellegrin, 1993), Livre VII, chap. 13, [1331b27] : « Dans tous les domaines le succès réside dans deux facteurs : l’un est de poser correctement le but et la fin des actions, l’autre de trouver les actions menant à cette fin. […] Or dans les arts et les sciences, il faut maîtriser les deux, la fin et les actions tendant à cette fin. »
  • ARISTOTE, Éthique à Eudème (Flammarion, trad. Catherine Dalimier, 2013), Livre II, chap. 1, [1219a1] : « Dans ces conditions, admettons aussi que l’excellence est l’optimum d’une disposition, d’un état ou d’une faculté, appartenant à tout ce qui a un certain usage ou effet. C’est clair par induction. En effet, nous posons cette définition dans tous les domaines. Ainsi un manteau a une excellence car il a un effet et un usage, et son état optimal est son excellence. Et il en va de même pour l’excellence d’une embarcation et d’une maison entre autres choses, en sorte que cela vaut aussi pour l’excellence d’une âme puisque l’âme a un certain effet. Posons aussi que le meilleur effet est celui de l’état le meilleur et que les états ont entre eux les mêmes relations que les effets qui en découlent. De plus, l’effet de chaque chose c’est la fin : dès lors, il s’ensuit manifestement que l’effet est meilleur que l’état puisque la fin, en tant que fin, est ce qui est le meilleur (on a en effet posé que la fin est le meilleur et le terme ultime, ce en vue de quoi est tout le reste). »
  • ARISTOTE, Éthique à Nicomaque (Flammarion, trad. Richard Bodéüs, 2004), Livre I, p. 69-71, [1097b26] : « De même, en effet, qu’un flûtiste, un sculpteur, tout artiste et globalement ceux qui ont un certain office et une action à exécuter semblent trouver, dans cet office, leur bien et leur excellence […] celui du cithariste est de jouer de son instrument, mais s’il est bon, c’est d’en bien jouer ! […] chaque œuvre parfaitement accomplie traduit la vertu qui lui est propre… » (I 2 10)
[43:10] Citation d’Ayn Rand sur le jugement esthétique
  • Art and Sense of Life » (1966) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 32-33 : « The fact that one agrees or disagrees with an artist’s philosophy is irrelevant to an esthetic appraisal of his work qua art. One does not have to agree with an artist (nor even to enjoy him) in order to evaluate his work. In essence, an objective evaluation requires that one identify the artist’s theme, the abstract meaning of his work (exclusively by identifying the evidence contained in the work and allowing no other, outside considerations), then evaluate the means by which he conveys it— i.e., taking his theme as criterion, evaluate the purely esthetic elements of the work, the technical mastery (or lack of it) with which he projects (or fails to project) his view of life. »
[44:10] Rand n’est pas formaliste
  • « The Goal of My Writing » (1963) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 11, p. 159 : « The subject is not the only attribute of art, but it is the fundamental one, it is the end to which all the others are the means. In most esthetic theories, however, the end—the subject—is omitted from consideration, and only the means are regarded as esthetically relevant. Such theories set up a false dichotomy and claim that a slob portrayed by the technical means of a genius is preferable to a goddess portrayed by the technique of an amateur. I hold that both are esthetically offensive; but while the second is merely esthetic incompetence, the first is an esthetic crime. There is no dichotomy, no necessary conflict between ends and means. The end does not justify the means— neither in ethics nor in esthetics. And neither do the means justify the end: there is no esthetic justification for the spectacle of Rembrandt’s great artistic skill employed to portray a side of beef. That particular painting may be taken as a symbol of everything I am opposed to in art and in literature. »
  • « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 11, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:29:13] : « It’s very bad art, because he selected a very bad subject. It’s bad art skillfully done. As for sense of life, you can’t derive any from that particular painting, which is another reason it’s bad art. It communicates nothing but the skill of how realistically that beeef is presented. »
[45:39] Critère du respect du medium
  • BINSWANGER Harry, « The Objectivist Esthetics« , citation de Rand dans SALMIERI & GOTTHELF (dir.), A Companion to Ayn Rand (Chichester / Malden, MA : John Wiley & Sons, 2016), Part III, chap. 7, p. 420 : « Since every category of art is defined and delimited by the medium it employs, the first and foremost esthetic criterion is that a work of art must not violate its appropriate medium – that is, must not depart from it or step outside its limits. This is a precondition of classifying a work as a work of art. A writer must achieve all his effects by means of language, a painter by means of color, etc. A writer may not, for instance, describe a character’s appearance by writing: “She looked like this –” and then drawing a picture on the page … A painter may not do a landscape and write across its blank upper part: “Here there is a sunset.” »
[46:08] Critère de l’intelligibilité
  • BINSWANGER Harry, « The Objectivist Esthetics« , citation de Rand dans SALMIERI & GOTTHELF (dir.), A Companion to Ayn Rand (op. cit.), Part III, chap. 7, p. 420 : « [A] work of art should be potentially understandable to a rational consciousness … the artist should be able to define – to himself, not necessarily to an audience – in objective, conceptual terms, the essence of what his work is saying and the means by which he expects it to be understood […] A work of art that does not present intelligible objects (or integrated sounds) is not a re creation of reality, cannot convey any values and ceases to be a work of art »
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 66 : « As a re-creation of reality, a work of art has to be representational; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility; if it does not present an intelligible subject, it ceases to be art. »
  • Ibid. p. 70 : « There is no place for the unknowable, the unintelligible, the undefinable, the nonobjective in any human product. This side of an insane asylum, the actions of a human being are motivated by a conscious purpose; when they are not, they are of no interest to anyone outside a psychotherapist’s office. And when the practitioners of modern art declare that they don’t know what they are doing or what makes them do it, we should take their word for it and give them no further consideration. »
  • SURES Mary Ann, dans PEIKOFF Leonard « What is Art? » (émission radio de 1996), enregistrement YouTube, part 3 [14:45] : « In order to qualify as an artwork it must be intelligible. That doesn’t mean that you would be able to understand everything about the artwork [immediately] when you perceive it, but that it is understandable… »
[46:39] Critère de l’intégration
  • BINSWANGER Harry, « The Objectivist Esthetics« , citation de Rand dans SALMIERI & GOTTHELF (dir.), A Companion to Ayn Rand (op. cit.), Part III, chap. 7, p. 420 : « Every aspect and attribute of a work of art must be ruled by one central idea, by a central principle which constitutes its theme, determines the artist’s choices and unites the work into a non‐contradictory sum. Contradictions destroy one of the essential, defining characteristics of a work of art: the perspective of a single viewpoint, a single set of values, without which a work becomes a random collection of accidents. »
  • The Fountainhead (op. cit.), p. 24 : « Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it’s made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. »
  • Ibid. p. 579 : « Do you know what constitutes an integrating principle? A thought. The one thought, the single thought that created the thing and every part of it. »
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 56 : « Integration is the hallmark of art— and unless the performance and the primary work are fully integrated, the result is the opposite of the cognitive function of art »
  • Ibid. p. 63 : « It has been said that if one stopped the projection of Siegfried and cut out a film frame at random, it would be as perfect in composition as a great painting. Every action, gesture and movement in this film is calculated to achieve that effect. Every inch of the film is stylized, i.e., condensed to those stark, bare essentials which convey the nature and spirit of the story, of its events, of its locale. The entire picture was filmed indoors, including the magnificent legendary forests whose every branch was man-made (but does not look so on the screen). While Lang was making Siegfried, it is reported, a sign hung on the wall of his office: “Nothing in this film is accidental.” This is the motto of great art. Very few artists, in any field, have ever been able to live up to it. »
[47:22] Sur le beau
  • « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, The Philosophy of Objectivism (séminaire, 1976), leçon 11, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:36:52] : « Beauty is a sense of harmony. Whether it’s an image, a human face, a body, or a sunset, take the object which you call beautiful, as a unit [and ask yourself]: what parts is it made up of, what are its constituent elements, and are they all harmonious? If they are, the result is beautiful. If there are contradictions and clashes, the result is marred or positively ugly. […] Now since this is an objective definition of beauty, there of course can be universal standards of beauty—provided you define the terms of what objects you are going to classify as beautiful and what you take as the ideal harmonious relationship of the elements of that particular object. To say, “It’s in the eyes of the beholder”—that, of course, would be pure subjectivism, if taken literally. It isn’t [a matter of] what you, for unknown reasons, decide to regard as beautiful. It is true, of course, that if there were no valuers, then nothing could be valued as beautiful or ugly, because values are created by the observing consciousness—but they are created by a standard based on reality. So here the issue is: values, including beauty, have to be judged as objective, not subjective or intrinsic.
  • BINSWANGER Harry, « The Objectivist Esthetics« , dans SALMIERI & GOTTHELF (dir.), A Companion to Ayn Rand (op. cit.), Part III, chap. 7, p. 406 : « Note, however, that her esthetics is not a theory of “beauty” as such (though her theory may have implications for that), but of the meaning of artworks. »
[48:18] La subjectivité des goûts musicaux
  • « Art and Cognition » (1971) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 4, p. 44-46 : « This brings us to the great, unanswered question: Why does music make us experience emotions? In the other arts, whose works are perceived by the normal cognitive process, the answer can be found in the work itself by a conceptual analysis of its nature and meaning; a common vocabulary and an objective criterion of esthetic judgment can be established. There is no such vocabulary or criterion, at present, in the field of music—neither among different cultures nor within the same culture. It is obvious that the answer lies in the nature of the work, since it is the work that evokes the emotions. But how does it do it? Why does a succession of sounds produce an emotional reaction? Why does it involve man’s deepest emotions and his crucial, metaphysical values? How can sounds reach man’s emotions directly, in a manner that seems to by-pass his intellect? What does a certain combination of sounds do to man’s consciousness to make him identify it as gay or sad? […] Until a conceptual vocabulary is discovered and defined, no objectively valid criterion of esthetic judgment is possible in the field of music. (There are certain technical criteria, dealing mainly with the complexity of harmonic structures, but there are no criteria for identifying the content, i.e., the emotional meaning of a given piece of music and thus demonstrating the esthetic objectivity of a given response.) At present, our understanding of music is confined to the gathering of material, i.e., to the level of descriptive observations. Until it is brought to the stage of conceptualization, we have to treat musical tastes or preferences as a subjective matter—not in the metaphysical, but in the epistemological sense; i.e., not in the sense that these preferences are, in fact, causeless and arbitrary, but in the sense that we do not know their cause. No one, therefore, can claim the objective superiority of his choices over the choices of others. Where no objective proof is available, it’s every man for himself—and only for himself. »

Qu’est-ce qu’un bon artiste ?

[49:54] Il sait que le talent n’est pas inné
  • « The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made » (1973), dans Philosophy: Who Needs It (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 36 : « Many men are crippled by the influence of this uncertainty. When such a man considers a goal or desire he wants to achieve, the first question in his mind is: “Can I do it?”— not: “What is required to do it?” His question means: “Do I have the innate ability?” For example: “I want to be a composer more than anything else on earth, but I have no idea of how it’s done. Do I have that mysterious gift which will do it for me, somehow?” […] If he does not give up his desire right then, he stumbles uncertainly to attempt to achieve it. Any small success augments his anxiety: he does not know what caused it and whether he can repeat it. Any small failure is a crushing blow: he takes it as proof that he lacks the mystic endowment. When he makes a mistake, he does not ask himself: “What do I need to learn?”—he asks: “What’s wrong with me?” He waits for an automatic and omnipotent inspiration, which never comes. He spends years on a cheerless struggle, with his eyes focused inward, on the growing, leering monster of self-doubt, while existence drifts by, unseen, on the periphery of his mental vision. Eventually, he gives up. […] It is impossible to tell what amount of authentic intelligence, particularly in the arts, has been hampered, stunted or crushed by the myth of “innate endowment.” »
  • We the Living (op. cit.), « Foreword », p. ix : « [N]o one is born with any kind of “talent” and, therefore, every skill has to be acquired. Writers are made, not born. To be exact, writers are self-made. »
  • « Question Period », dans PEIKOFF Leonard, Objective Communication (séminaire, 1980), leçon 1, questions-réponses (intervention de Rand), enregistrement Youtube [02:29:06] : « As far as writing is concerned, I did it myself and that’s why I don’t believe in innate talent. You’re not born a writer, you have to make yourself one, but you don’t have to wait for educational influences either. »
  • « The Moral Basis of Individualism », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 3 « Transition Between Novels », chap. 8, entrée du 20 juillet 1945, p. 292 : « If men scream so much against the “injustice” of being born without some special great talent or desirable faculty—why don’t they exercise such faculties as they have, instead? Most of their unhappiness in this line […] comes from second-handedness. They don’t want to write—they want the fame, money, and prestige of a writer. If they had an actual, personal desire to write, i.e., if they had something to say—without any second-handedness involved, no desire to impress, nor any desire to re-hash some plagiarized ideas—they would have the talent. Men usually have the talent for that which they want to do—if they really want to do it, i.e., if their primary motive is personal, not second-hand. »
  • « Writing and the Subconscious » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 6-7, p. 2 : « The writers who tell you that writing is an innate talent—that if you sit down to write, God either moves you or He does not, and if He does not, there is nothing you can do about it—these writers are not necessarily lying. They are merely poor introspectors. They do not know what enables them to write. »
[50:15] Il doit être rationnel
  • « The Nature of an Artist » (1957), dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 140 : « This, Miss Taggart, this sort of spirit, courage and love for truth—as against a sloppy bum who goes around proudly assuring you that he has almost reached the perfection of a lunatic, because he’s an artist who hasn’t the faintest idea what his art work is or means, he’s not restrained by such crude concepts as “being” or “meaning,” he’s the vehicle of higher mysteries, he doesn’t know how he created his work or why, it just came out of him spontaneously, like vomit out of a drunkard, he did not think, he wouldn’t stoop to thinking, he just felt it, all he has to do is feel—he feels, the flabby, loose-mouthed, shifty-eyed, drooling, shivering, uncongealed bastard! […] The operator knows that it’s not his feelings that keep the coal carts moving under the earth— and he knows what does keep them moving. Feelings? Oh yes, we do feel, he, you and I—we are, in fact, the only people capable of feeling—and we know where our feelings come from. »
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (1962), dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 7, p. 1210 : « If you rebel against reason, if you succumb to the old bromides of the Witch Doctors, such as: “Reason is the enemy of the artist” or “The cold hand of reason dissects and destroys the joyous spontaneity of man’s creative imagination”—I suggest that you take note of the following fact: by rejecting reason and surrendering to the unhampered sway of their unleashed emotions (and whims), the apostles of irrationality, the existentialists, the Zen Buddhists, the non-objective artists, have not achieved a free, joyous, triumphant sense of life, but a sense of doom, nausea and screaming, cosmic terror. »
  • « Style I: Depictions of Love » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 121 : « To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be. »
  • « Writing and the Subconscious » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 3, p. 2-3 : « Most writers cannot account even for why they chose to write a particular story, let alone for the manner in which they wrote it. In effect, they take the attitude of the worst medieval mystics. […] If you do not want to be reduced to such a condition, you have to be conscious of your premises in general, and of your literary premises in particular. You have to train yourself to grasp your premises clearly… »
  • « The Moral Basis of Individualism », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 3 « Transition Between Novels », chap. 8, entrée du 6 novembre 1944, p. 270 : « The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you’re doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it? It’s a coldly intellectual process. If your emotions do not proceed from your intellect, you will not be able to apply it, even if you know all the rules. The mental ability of a writer determines the literary level of his output. »
[50:45] Il doit être objectif
  • « The Visual Arts », interview pour WKCR, reproduite dans PODRITSKE Marlene et SCHWARTZ Peter (éd.) Objectively Speaking (op. cit.), chap. 15, p. 110 : « Do you think an artist can judge can his own work objectively? — If he cannot, nobody can. An artist must judge his own work objectively, and of course he can. Whether or not an artist does so, is a different issue—and, unfortunately, most do not. There is more mysticism in the field of art than in any other human activity. Most artists are trained to work by so-called instinct or inspiration. They are taught to create by indefinable emotions. That is a psychological flaw in most artists. To ensure a proper, conscious approach to art, it is mandatory that an artist be able to identify what he has done and to judge it objectively. »
  • Lettre à Channing Pollock du 8 juin 1941, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 2 « We the Living to The Fountainhead« , p. 50 : « The man of talent is always more severe with his own writing than any outside critic could ever be. »
[51:02] Il doit être indépendant
  • Lettre à Rose Wilder Lane, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 353 : « An artist, who is not recognized by society, should and must, morally […] continue to pursue his work, if that is what he wants to do, whether it is of any advantage to others around him or not. He must, of course, provide his own means to support himself—he cannot demand support from others, if they don’t care to buy his works. But he must do what he wishes with himself, his life and his money—whether he is doing any “good” to others or not. »
  • The Fountainhead (op. cit.), p. 18-19 : « They were sketches of buildings such as had never stood on the face of the earth. They were as the first houses built by the first man born, who had never heard of others building before him. […] The buildings were not Classical, they were not Gothic, they were not Renaissance. They were only Howard Roark. »
  • Ibid. p. 24-25 : « [T]he best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one. »
  • Ibid. p. 328 : « I think you’re the best sculptor we’ve got. I think it, because […] you’ve gone beyond the probable and made us see what is possible, but possible only through you. »
  • Ibid. p. 678 : « Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received—hatred. The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. »
  • « Style I: Depictions of Love » (1958), dans The Art of Fiction (op. cit.), chap. 8, p. 121 : « Just as man is a being of self-made soul, so a writer is a being of self-made style. Both are made by the same process—by a man’s being fully convinced of certain premises to the point where they become subconscious and automatic. »
  • « The Nature of an Artist » (1957), dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 140 : « Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own eyes—which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification—which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before. »
[51:46] Il doit être égoïste
  • The Fountainhead (op. cit.), p. 24 : « I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. »
  • Ibid. p. 26 : « [I] don’t intend to build in order to serve or help anyone. I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build. »
    Ibid. p. 579-580 : « The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way. […] A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. »
  • Ibid. p. 678 : « The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power—that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He had lived for himself. »
  • « To the Readers of The Fountainhead » (1945), dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), Appendix, p. 669 : « I decided to become a writer not in order to save the world nor to serve my fellow men, but for the simple, personal, selfish, egotistical happiness of creating the kind of men and events I could like, respect and admire »
  • Lettre à Gerald Loeb du 5 août 1944, dans Idib., chap. 4 « Return to Hollywood », p. 138-139 : « Unless a book pleases its author—it will not please anyone. […] The conception of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is more logical and feasible than the vicious popular fallacy that a man of talent can make himself sink below his own shoe soles—that is, disregard his talent, his taste, his judgment, his literary standards, and write down to “the public” for financial reward. »
  • Lettre à Robert Spencer Carr du 23 janvier 1949, dans Ibid., chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 422-423 : « My book is of value to people, because my purpose in writing it was my own philosophical interest for my own pleasure. I did not attempt to do good to my readers. I did not attempt to render any sort of service to mankind. I did not consider it my duty to be of value to anyone. I did not think of anyone, only of my subject. I am happy if readers found benefit in my book, but that benefit was not my purpose. »
[52:14] Le message ne doit pas être sa priorité
  • « The Psycho-Epistemology of Art » (1965) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 1, p. 11 : « [S]ince every art work has a theme, it will necessarily convey some conclusion, some “message,” to its audience. But that influence and that “message” are only secondary consequences. Art is not the means to any didactic end. This is the difference between a work of art and a morality play or a propaganda poster. »
  • « The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age » (interview donnée en 1962), enregistrement YouTube [00:02:40] : « Do not make the mistake of concluding that the purpose of art is education or enlightenment or propaganda or any kind of narrow didactic message. »
  • Lettre à Gerald Loeb du 5 août 1944, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 4 « Return to Hollywood », p. 157 : « A STORY IS AN END IN ITSELF. It is not written to teach, sell, explain or destroy anything. It is not written even to entertain. It is written as a man is born—an organic whole, dictated only by its own laws and its own necessity—an end in itself, not a means to an end. Therefore, a story cannot be concerned with its future readers. That is a different consideration entirely. A story must be written for itself, for its own sake. I mean, of course, a good story. »
  • « The Goal of My Writing » (1963) dans The Romantic Manifesto (op. cit.), chap. 11, p. 160-161 : « They are not propaganda novels. The primary purpose for which these books were written was not the philosophical conversion of their readers. The primary purpose was to project and make real the characters who are the book’s heroes. »
[52:35] Il ne doit pas chercher le succès commercial comme fin en soi
  • Lettre à Gerald Loeb du 3 juin 1944, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 4 « Return to Hollywood », p. 139-140 : « DO NOT SET OUT TO WRITE WITH YOUR EYES ON THE BOX OFFICE. IT CAN’T BE DONE. You must write that which you consider good, to the best of your judgment, taste and ability. There is no other rule or standard to go by. If you commit the above popular error—it is a fatal error and your writing effort will be doomed in advance […] And of all the things which writing isn’t, box-office-chasing is the foremost. […] I don’t suppose you realize how many established rules of the literary marketplace I blasted to hell in [The Fountainhead]; how many popular notions I ignored or reversed. Well, it sold—didn’t it? So I’m the last person on earth to whom anybody should say that writing according to one’s own conscience and standards is the opposite of commercial success. »
  • Ibid. p. 143-144 : « The product comes first, the financial rewards second. Even if the money is the manufacturer’s first aim—precisely in order to make it, he cannot place money first. […] The main point is that both the industrialist and the artist have to place the quality of their product first. The financial reward is only the consequence. […] There are no common, popular standards of what makes a good book. You, the writer, must set the standards. You have no other choice. […] Real success is not, cannot, never has and never will be determined by money in the field of literature. WRITE THAT WHICH YOU THINK IS GOOD. If, by your own honest standards, you find your writing good—you are a success. The rest is secondary and incidental. »
  • « Theme and Characters », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 3 « The Fountainhead« , chap. 4, entrée du 22 décembre 1935, p. 87 : « Why did all the other arts reach heights the movies never attained? Why did they prosper and survive in spite of the fact that they did not consider the “box-office,” the mob’s approval? Precisely because they did not consider the mob’s approval. They created—and forced the mob to accept their creations. »
  • Lettre à Henry Blanke du 6 décembre 1945, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 244 : « Had I followed their advice, had I tried to compromise, to soften my book or conventionalize it a littke—it wouldn’t have sold two copies and it wouldn’t have been worth two cents. It is the unity of the book—the unity of theme, style, conception and execution—the unity and the complete, ruthless consistency that made the book successful. »
[53:02] Il doit être intègre
  • The Fountainhead (op. cit.), p. 313 : « And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor’s pocket? No, it’s not as easy as that. If that were all, I’d say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren’t. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. »
  • Ibid. p. 196 : « [Roark] explained why an honest building, like an honest man, had to be of one piece and one faith; what constituted the life source, the idea in any existing thing or creature, and why—if one smallest part committed treason to that idea—the thing of the creature was dead; and why the good, the high and the noble on earth was only that which kept its integrity. »
  • Lettre à Henry Blanke du 6 décembre 1945, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 248 : « Do not give in to “Hollywood.” Do not give in to the director. Do not give in to the stars. The greatest box-office name will not save this picture if, in order to get that name, you had to compromise and destroy the story. Do not accept anyone for any job on this picture, if his ideas are not your own and a compromise is required to find “a middle road.” […] You must believe the thesis of The Fountainhead in regard to its production. That thesis is not just fiction and it does not apply just to architects: man must act on his own judgment. You must produce The Fountainhead on your own independent, original, uninfluenced judgment. […] You had the integrity and the courage to be first to discover The Fountainhead in Hollywood. Do not let others rob you now of that courage and of your own vision. Make the picture as you think it should be made. Preserve your own judgment—as strictly and honestly as you can. »
  • Lettre à Jean Wick du 27 octobre 1934, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 1 « Arrival in America to We the Living« , p. 19 : « If anyone is capable of improving that book—he should have written it himself. I would prefer not only never seeing it in print, but also burning every manuscript of it—rather than having William Shakespeare himself add one line to it which was not mine, or cross out one comma. I repeat, I welcome and appreciate all suggestions of changes to improve the book without destroying its theme, and I am quite willing to make them. But these changes will be made by me. »
[53:20] Il doit être exigeant avec lui-même
  • « The Nature of an Artist » (1957), dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 141 : « I, who know what discipline, what effort, what tension of mind, what unrelenting strain upon one’s power of clarity are needed to produce a work of art—I, who know that it requires a labor which makes a chain gang look like rest and a severity no army-drilling sadist could impose… »
  • Lettre à Channing Pollock du 8 juin 1941, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 2 « We the Living to The Fountainhead« , p. 50-51 : « It is only the completely mediocre writer who never entertains any doubts on the value of his work. The man of talent is always more severe with his own writing than any outside critic could ever be. A good writer’s first instinct is always to blame himself. His own scrupulous honesty makes it difficult for him to accuse others of dishonesty or injustice. »
  • « The Moral Basis of Individualism », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 3 « Transition Between Novels », chap. 8, entrée du 19 juillet 1945, p. 288 : « But before you can get appreciated—ask yourself: “For what?” You cannot be appreciated for a potentiality you have not exhibited. Act, beforeyou demand any appreciation from others; give them objective evidence ofwhat it is you want them to like and admire in you; be sure you have objective (rational) standards for your achievements. {This is an example of thefact that the rational is the only bond possible between men, and the onlystandard in all their relationships.) »
[53:30] Il doit être exigeant avec son public
  • « The Nature of an Artist » (1957), dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 139 : « Miss Taggart, how many people are there to whom my work means as much as it does to you?… That is the payment I demand. Not many can afford it. I don’t mean your enjoyment, I don’t mean your emotion— emotions be damned!—I mean your understanding and the fact that your enjoyment was of the same nature as mine, that it came from the same source: from your intelligence, from the conscious judgment of a mind able to judge my work by the standard of the same values that went to write it—I mean, not the fact that you felt, but that you felt what I wished you to feel, not the fact that you admire my work, but that you admire it for the things I wished to be admired. … There’s only one passion in most artists more violent than their desire for admiration: their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do receive. But it’s a fear I’ve never shared. I do not fool myself about my work or the response I seek—I value both too highly. I do not care to be admired causelessly, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively—or blindly. I do not care for blindness in any form, I have too much to show—or for deafness, I have too much to say. I do not care to be admired by anyone’s heart—only by someone’s head. And when I find a customer with that invaluable capacity, then my performance is a mutual trade to mutual profit. An artist is a trader, Miss Taggart, the hardest and most exacting of all traders. »
[53:53] Il doit être fier, confiant et avoir l’estime de soi
  • Lettre à Albert Mannheimer du 10 octobre 1946, dans BERLINER Michael S. (éd.), Letters of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), chap. 6 « The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years », p. 333-334 : « The only important thing is what you think of it yourself. If, according to your own best judgment, the critics were wrong […] then you should feel angry and disgusted, but nothing more than that. If you think that they were justified to any extent, if the play was not produced as you wanted or did not satisfy you when you saw it acted—then look at it as an experiment, as experience, and make your own conclusions about what was right or wrong. But make conclusions yourself, as you saw it—not because of what critics or anybody else has said. […] There is only one thing which can be tragic and terribly wrong for you—and that is, if you were satisfied with the play and the production, to let yourself doubt your own judgment because of the opinions of others. […] Whatever you do, don’t doubt yourself because of others. That’s the only thing I want to impress upon you, as strongly as I can. Don’t let second-handness make you suffer unnecessarily. »
  • Lettre à Constance Woodward du 28 décembre 1948, dans Ibid., p. 417 : « You ask me why I wrote the book and if I expect readers to be “brave enough” to believe it. I wrote that book for the same reason that Roark built his buildings. How people would react to it was not my primary concern. If they are not brave enough, it is their tough luck, not mine. »
  • « The Mind on Strike », dans Journals of Ayn Rand (op. cit.), part. 4 « Atlas Shrugged« , chap. 11, entrée du 18 avril 1946, p. 425-426 : « It is proper for a creator to have an unlimited confidence in himself and his ability, to feel certain that he can get anything he wishes out of life, that he can accomplish anything he decides. to accomplish, and that it’s up to him to do it. »
  • The Fountainhead (op. cit.), p. 389 : « Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us. —But I don’t think of you. »
[54:09] L’artiste et l’homme d’affaires
  • « The Nature of an Artist » (1957), dans For the New Intellectual (op. cit.), p. 140-141 : « That shining vision which they talk about as belonging to the authors of symphonies and novels—what do they think is the driving faculty of men who discover how to use oil, how to run a mine, how to build an electric motor? That sacred fire which is said to burn within musicians and poets—what do they suppose moves an industrialist to defy the whole world for the sake of his new metal, as the inventors of the airplane, the builders of the railroads, the discoverers of new germs or new continents have done through all the ages? […] [W]hat we did not know and have delayed learning for too long is the nature of those who claim that they cannot account for their feelings. We did not know what it is that they feel. We are learning it now. It was a costly error. And those most guilty of it, will pay the hardest price —as, in justice, they must. Those most guilty of it were the real artists, who will now see that they are first to be exterminated and that they had prepared the triumph of their own exterminators by helping to destroy their only protectors. For if there is more tragic a fool than the businessman who doesn’t know that he’s an exponent of man’s highest creative spirit—it’s the artist who thinks that the businessman is his enemy. »

Conclusion

[54:38] L’esthétique Objectiviste comme spécialisée dans la littérature
  • MAYHEW Robert (éd.), Ayn Rand Answers (op. cit.), « 4: Esthetics, Art, and Artists », p. 224 : « I suspect it’s chaos in painting as well. For instance, what is considered romanticism in painting, I’d call rank naturalism. So I wouldn’t claim that the classifications I’ve defined for literature hold for the other realms of art. Someone would have to establish that. All the arts suffer from a lack of valid and objective esthetics. There hasn’t been any since Aristotle. Everything works by accidental observations on the part of various philosophers and commentators. People accept distinctions approximately and with no clear definitions. Let us lay the foundation for a different approach. »

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