How do you define art?

Obviously omniscient. None of it is done in the person's own inner voice, it's told by the narrator rather shallowly and through telling. He felt this, she reflected on that, etc.

From Sparknotes:

Point Of View
The nameless narrator of the novel presents both facts and inner thoughts of characters that no single character in the plot could know. Chiefly with regard to Anna and Levin, but occasionally to others as well, the narrator describes characters’ states of mind, feelings, and attitudes. For a lengthy section at the end of Part Seven, the narrator enters directly into Anna’s mind.
​

It doesn't directly say omniscient, but it describes the omniscient POV. All done by the nameless narrator, which describes characters' inner thoughts and emotions. Apparently it goes deeper in Part Seven, I haven't seen that, but the rest is omniscient.

 

To you, perhaps not. To many others, it does. Here's one example:
https://nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/monologues/alas-poor-yorick/

The ode to futility is *exactly* what he's thinking. So how is that not displaying his thoughts? The fact that others have had them is irrelevent. Right at that point, it's Hamlet that's having them, not someone else.

And if I may say so, Louanne, I don't think you're actively discussing this so much as seeking agreement with your point of view - as I have found in some other of your threads. So you'll forgive me if I don't engage further. I'll leave you to enjoy this thread in peace.

Apologies to all for the disruption.

 

Obviously she isn't a psychopath, or she wouldn't be feeling guilt. It's much more subtle than that. She thought she would be immune to the guilt, as many murderers do, but found out differently.

I think I've made a strong enough case and I'll let it stand at this. This could just go on forever. I don't want to spend a day or two quibbling over these minor details.

 

I'm expressing my point of view. Others aren't?

 

Shakespeare was a large part of my English curriculum when I was in school, The Merchant of Venice in junior cycle, King Lear for senior. Nearly 40 years ago and I remember the process more vividly than the actual plays. I've heard it said that the tragedies have much greater substance than the comedies and, despite misgivings of being 17 years old learning something written almost 400 years prior, grew to enjoy King Lear. I had a similar argument with my son a few years back when he had King Lear on his senior cycle curriculum, me arguing that what was revealed of human nature 400 years ago holds true today, him making an argument similar to what's been attributed to Tolstoy here, contrivance and artificiality. King Lear and the others are plays, obviously, designed for performance not cold reading. We perceive the troupe's interpretation of the text which we then interpret as to meaning. It may not connect with everyone, but it's something of a leap to deny it artistic merit on the basis of such personal perspective. We've all read books highly regarded that do not connect with us in any meaningful way.

I've quoted your post above @Louanne Learning because I don't quite understand the "only". You might mean it was his singular intent, but context suggests it as limitation. To create characters and have them brought to life by generations of actors is no small undertaking. One may view the plays as contrived, others will disagree and say similar about some other piece of art that another might cherish. As it happens, there was an old discussion of Hamlet on radio tonight, focus on Ophelia by a leading psychiatrist round these parts (now deceased) and he expressed strong resonance with Ophelia's descent as tapping into his observations of psychosis. He also mentioned some of the stuff Xoic touched on, that intuitive grasp of subconscious before the term was invented.

Thinking about this, can't say I agree either. The say and the do are what the playwright has to use, but the art is revealing the character through those factors. To be or not to be is a contemplation of suicide, that's an emotional core and the soliloquy reveals the thought process as he grapples with his choices. Just watched Sir Lawrence deliver it and it's considerably more powerful than my internal read.

Regarding POV, I'd suggest there's few more comprehensive POVs than watching the character on stage, seeing what the character sees, hearing what they hear, speaking and acting in accordance with those perceptions. Done correctly, the audience is as unlikely to be an inactive, passive recipient as anyone reading a book they love. I must add that I say this as someone with pitiful experience of attending theatre. To read a play cold is similar to reading written music rather than absorbing the performance.

This brings me back to a point I made way back on this thread, art truly does not reveal the artist. It allows the observer/reader/recipient to better understand themselves, evokes their emotional or cognitive reaction. If a novel can climb an artistic pinnacle that is outside the reach of theatrical drama because of that notion of POV, might one not say the same thing about music? Or painting? Neither of those explicitly reveal the inner world of the artist but do draw on the reader a revelation or realisation or emotional connection that is entirely unique to each person appreciating the art.

 

Yes, Shakespeare’s soliloquies are instances of interiority. Just because Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy draws on philosophical ideas doesn’t mean it isn’t a representation of Hamlet’s “psychological” feelings. It contains his irresolution, his tendency to ruminate, his actual feelings concerning death, etc. etc. It’s literally him talking to himself about himself — how is this not psychology? But beyond that, it seems like you are attacking drama as inherently inferior to the psychological novel, simply because it doesn’t have the same narrative means, or even the same goals? Shakespeare wasn’t trying to minutely portray the inner condition of an adulteress in as fine detail as possible, this wasn’t the sort of thing he was doing. Tolstoy and Shakespeare are different.

But you last read it in high school? I don’t understand. People have complicated motives for murdering; not everybody who commits murder (and she doesn’t even do it herself) without compunction in the moment is a psychopath…she had strong motives. Obviously murderers experience guilt sometimes. I think Macbeth is his most perfect play. I didn’t have problems with Shakespeare’s portrayal of the psychology.

 

Confirmation:

Anna Karenina Narrator:
Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
Third Person (Omniscient)

In the world of Anna Karenina, the eyes of Leo Tolstoy see all and know all. In other words, this novel is told from the perspective of an omniscient, or all-knowing third-person narrator. The story slips into the perspectives of Anna, Vronsky, Karenin, Levin—even Levin's dog, Laska (for two chapters)!
Source
​

It frequently slips into several people's minds in the course of a few sentences. At the end of the sample on Amazon it tells us what Stepan Arkadyevitch is thinking and then what both his young daughter and son are thinking, all in the space of three or four very brief paragraphs, but goes only very shallowly into each.

 

Oh dear, I never felt I was attacking, only stating how I understood things. I never thought in terms of inferiority or superiority, only what was. The novel affords greater opportunity to get inside a head than does a play.

 

@B.E. Nugent Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. I really appreciate it.

I agree, Shakespeare was very adroit at expressing human truths and that

I don’t think I have said anything that contradicts that. Shakespeare was genius at capturing that. His characters were more vehicles for these human truths than they were individuals.

Oh my, if art is not personal, what is it?

I was not referring to artist’s intent. I was referring to the structure of a play.

As you say later in the post:

I have never meant to diminish the greatness of Shakespeare’s plays. Sorry if it seemed that way.

But, what inspires the increased understanding? What inspires the reaction? It’s a reaction, to something that the artist has created, something that definitely reveals something of the artist.

 

There's that, of course, but I think the more interesting thing about this are these lines:

"Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that."

A few people have theorised that women in late medieval times were unfamiliar with makeup, especially because of Hollywood's portrayal of medieval people with plain faces. If these people are better educated, they'll point to Henry VIII's Sumptuary Laws, and the fact they were more draconian than earlier ones.

But the rebuttal is very simple:

1. Henry VIII's Sumptuary Laws can be googled, and they don't mention makeup. (The Sumptuary Laws of later ages, especially the Puritans, were much more draconian).

2. Queen Elizabeth I is famous for using lots of makeup. (Since lead was usually present in late medieval foundation, it's possible that lead poisoning was a factor in her death).

3. The above line, of course - "Let her paint an inch thick ... make her laugh at that".

As an aside, Hamlet is thought to have been written sometime between 1599 and 1601. It was published as a quarto in 1603 and in a much fuller version in 1604–05. Therefore, it is written when the English people were nervous about succession; hence the theme of Hamlet succeeding his father, just as James I succeeded Elizabeth or the Jacobeans succeeded the Tudors.

The above reference to makeup and death might have been a sly dig at the late Queen -- although, of course, Shakespeare couldn't make it too obvious; Queen Elizabeth I was famous for her violent temper tantrums.

Speaking of which, Elizabeth and other monarchs of the day didn't go to the theatre, to stand in the mud with the oiks. If a monarch wanted to see a show, he/she would've summoned the actors to perform a private show. (This continued until at least Queen Victoria's time, when Victoria summoned Gilbert and Sullivan to perform The Gondoliers privately, and quite enjoyed it too).

So it's possible, though unlikely, that Elizabeth would've seen Hamlet before her death in 1603. Elizabeth did not enjoy Shakespeare's tragedies, and much preferred his comedies. According to Alfred Harbage's book, Shakespeare's Audience:

"In 1595 ... the company of Shakespeare and Burbage was called to play at court three times ..." According to tradition, Elizabeth enjoyed Falstaff so much in the Henry plays that she asked the Bard for more of him, the result being The Merry Wives of Windsor. There are records of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth and others being performed at court for Elizabeth's successor, James I, who had become the patron of Shakespeare's company."

We know that Elizabeth I saw Love's Labours Lost, and she may well have commissioned The Merry Wives of Windsor specifically for a Garter feast. She very much disliked Richard II.

James I appears to have been more appreciative of Shakespeare's plays. Under his patronage, Shakespeare's company saw its royal performances increase to an average of 12 per season - and where the titles are recorded, the overwhelming majority are Shakespeare's. We know he saw Othello, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, Comedy of Errors, Henry V and The Merchant of Venice (twice), just in the Revels of 1604/5. It is not unlikely that over the years he saw them all.

England's kings and queens usually summoned actors to perform plays during the season of Revels, i.e. every year from Hallowmass day (November 1) to Shrove Tuesday (47 days before Easter Sunday). Private theatrical performances were a standard feature of these festivities - not just for the royal household, but also for those of other great magnates - and the London companies of players might each expect a number of lucrative commissioned performances.

 

To this wonderful discussion, I can only add a cautionary note: Reading Shakespeare's plays is not the same as watching them. They were written to be watched, not read. In this age of DVDs and streaming video, there is no excuse for avoiding Shakespeare's works in dramatic form.

Some of my favorites:
Joss Whedon's version of Much Ado about Nothing*
Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado about Nothing, Henry V and Hamlet.
Laurence Fishburne's Othello (also with, and directed by Branagh)
Patrick Stewart's Macbeth, reimagining it in a Stalinesque setting
Ian McKellen's Richard III, set in a 20th century Fascist England
James Earl Jones's King Lear.
Al Pacino's Merchant of Venice

And plenty of others, some more successful than others. The Lawrence Olivier versions of Shakespeare are benchmarks, even though they have been surpassed in many respects.

What all of them have in common is a demonstration of how great actors can transmute the written word into the spoken one, and add their own depth to the magnificence of the work.

*with a most charming version of "Sigh No More"

 

Completley agreed. Each time I would read one of his plays I would also find at least one movie version (or a TV special, or a recorded stage production), plus I'd read it from the Folger Shakespeare library, where the left page is script and the right page has explanatory notes to help you understand the old-fashioned idioms and whatnot. Plus I'd often also consult Sparknotes and other online resources, and in the case of Hamlet, because it was so difficult to understand, I bought a book called What Happens in Hamlet. All of that really helped. Yeah, if I had just tried to read the plays I would have been completely lost. I also bought a few books about his writings and his times to help me understand them in general.

I found a good version of Hamlet starring Mel Gibson. Oh, and I almost forgot—there's a specialized Sparknotes website called No Fear Shakespeare, that's a lot like the Folger paperbacks, in that it explains things to make it easier to understand.

 

I have heard this before, and today visited the website for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and came across a similar quote from Professor Stanley Wells:

 

I went down an internet wormhole today. I read Tolstoy on Shakespeare—twice. Recommended reading. I totally get what Tolstoy is saying, and if you take the time to read it, I’d like to hear your comments.

I also read Orwell’s response to Tolstoy – Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool. It’s a totally inadequate rebuttal to Tolstoy and he does not bother to answer any of the main points well-made by Tolstoy. Indeed, Orwell states:

But he goes on:

This is the crux of Orwell's response. Orwell gets into conspiratorial thinking and character assassination. Hey, if you can’t rebut the issues, attack their source. Orwell even has the audacity to state:

Tolstoy read Shakespeare in every possible form, in Russian, in English, in German and in Schlegel's translation. Tolstoy gave it the intellectual attention it merited, but Orwell, continuing with his condescension, ascribes the following motivation to Tolstoy:

Wow, Orwell is a mind-reader. Never mind all the substance of Tolstoy’s pamphlet, he was just being petty. I must admit I was disappointed by Orwell’s response; I had thought better of him.

Anyway, I came across a letter written by George Bernard Shaw (the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925), who is often credited as the second greatest English playwriter after Shakespeare. He writes:

So now I am reading Pygmalion to compare Shaw to Shakespeare.

 

What i get from his pamphlet is that Tolstoy was an enemy of fun. He was explicitly opposed to any art that isn’t moralistic and religious. Shaw also has this obnoxious outlook; he and Tolstoy were two peas in a pod. I suppose they regretted that Shakespeare neglected to write a play in favor of temperance.

And Tolstoy’s attribution of popularity to some sort of “mass suggestion” is really shaky; he mentions the tulip craze, the crusades and the dreyfus affair, but these episodes didn’t last for centuries; and he doesn’t give any other examples of a literary suggestion—his examples are all dependent on fairly brief mass or mob dynamics within economic and political contexts: not the same context as literary criticism.

I think after over 400 years we can say that Shakespeare is not a fad. The influence of 19th century Germans and the Romantics on literary opinion has had enough time to mellow. Shakespeare was popular before them, anyway, for over a hundred years already.

Lear’s Fool and Falstaff are without humor? Tolstoy is an expert in humorlessness so I guess he ought to know.

I think the basic point is that Tolstoy had a particular outlook, to which Shakespeare could not be accommodated.

What more can you say? If Shakespeare doesn’t delight you, you shouldn’t read him; if you don’t get Shakespeare, you don’t get him. What irks me most is Tolstoy’s inability to recognize that Shakespeare might possess some merit—that he might simply not have the taste for it. But instead he feels the need to attribute the whole of Shakespeare’s popularity to “epidemic suggestion.” Orwell’s point is well-made that Tolstoy’s moralism dictated this, and that Tolstoy before his conversion would probably have been more likely to accept differences of taste as just that—differences of taste.

Tolstoy doesn’t like Shakespeare’s exaggerations, his vibrancy, his heightened use of language. I think that Orwell gives a good response, and I wouldn’t call what he’s doing “character assassination”; “why would Tolstoy have written this?” is a good question, and Orwell’s speculations hold water in my opinion. Orwell’s criticisms too—Tolstoy was not being impartial here, and he was not without some extra-literary motive, as his explicit moralism in this pamphlet makes obvious.

 

Louanne, I don't think you're attacking anyone or anything. This is attacking:

And if you do think that plays are lesser forms of entertainment, that's fine. It's like my thoughts on unstructured poetry: I'm not steering people away from it or hurting the medium by expressing my complete disinterest.

You must equate an objective POV novel with a play then, though?

Regardless, you're missing what novels can't do. An actor's/director's interpretation of character is an addition to the art. So the script is a core that's then reinterpreted every time it's performed. And these feelings/emotions are somewhat provided with words, but also with raw behaviour, a much more direct link to emotional state than mere language. Words are like someone relaying an edited recount about their dream, while a performance is closer to observing the dream itself.

 

No doubt he was a serious intellectual. He took art very seriously. He wrote a whole book about it, so his opinions are learned and deep. Whatever he wrote, he believed in - one of his conditions to consider a piece as true art. He would say that Shakespeare did not believe in what he was writing.

He was an idealist, and believed art should contain ideals. He rejected Shakespeare’s morality that “the end justifies the means.”

In any case, this is only one aspect of his wider criticisms of Shakespeare. In fact, he does not even mention it in his summary of why Shakespeare’s work is not, in his opinion, art. He focuses on these criteria: subject matter, characters, plot, emotion, and the sincerity of the writer, as in the quote below.

This discussion began with a question: What does Tolstoy mean when he says Shakespeare’s work is not art? I think the above quote answers that question, yet it has been overlooked.

Definitely not a fad. Definitely has literary merit. But interestingly enough:

How did Shakespeare get so popular?

This is self-evident in reading Tolstoy’s pamphlet.

I didn’t see that Tolstoy’s criticisms were based on “taste” but on explicitly stated criteria.

Besides, Tolstoy recognizes that Shakespeare’s speeches are eloquent and profound – but are not genuine (therefore not art):

A reader can love Shakespeare and still criticize him. Voltaire famously described Shakespeare’s work as “an enormous dunghill” – yet:

Voltaire versus Shakespeare: The Lettre á L’Académie Francaise (1776)

Possibly the most famous literary criticism of Shakespeare’s work was written by Dr. Samuel Johnson, in the Preface to the Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare (published 1765), which touches on both “excellencies” and “defects.”

Johnson claims that Shakespeare merits praise, above all, as “the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” He goes on to say that “…in the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual: in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species” and “Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature.” – but (presaging Tolstoy):

The edition of Shakespeare of Samuel Johnson

10. Samuel Johnson: “Preface to Shakespeare”

So, yes, even Shakespeare is touchable.

 

Thank you for saying so! I appreciate it.

Not lesser, just different. And also, I'm not sure that Shakespeare would have satisfied Tolstoy if he had written novels instead of plays.

Isn't that what a dramatic POV is? Below is an example of something I have written - the ending to one of my stories - Forces of Attraction. How could it be written as a play?

Very interesting. My guess is that it's different for different people. Some are more carried away by watching a performance, and some are more carried away by the written word. I know, for me, the written word is more powerful.

 

It's ridiculous to compare a written script to a novel. It would make a lot more sense to compare a script to an outline for a novel, or a performance of the play to a novel. A script is just a working document that can't contain emotions and subtleties—it's nothing but the lines of dialogue plus a few stage directions. All the emotion and power and drama and life is put into it later by the players. This is why JLT and I said earlier that you've got to find performances of the plays rather than just read the scripts.

 

It hasn’t been overlooked; this is exactly what I’m talking about when I say it’s a matter of outlook. Those criteria and their application to Shakespeare are just, like, Tolstoy’s opinion, man. Tolstoy prefers it when art should be genuinely felt in the heart of the artist (as if he has any means of knowing what was going through Shakespeare’s head—I think the works themselves are proof that whatever Shakespeare was feeling was good enough), should deal with weighty matters (as if human life isn’t a weighty enough matter—and for Tolstoy it’s not), and should have a measured and pleasing technique (I guess Shakespeare’s technique is not the same as Tolstoy’s ideal). But to really does seem to me that these are arbitrary conditions. I could invent “impartial” criteria of art that would inherently favor Shakespeare.

Well, denying these two qualities in Shakespeare is Tolstoy’s project.

But in what way and to what end did he design the criteria? There’s something more going on than Tolstoy waking up one morning and deciding to apply some objective criteria to Shakespeare’s plays; I think he has a prior objection to Shakespeare which is fundamentally moralistic, from which proceeds his criteria. That’s what I strongly suspect, and it seems clear enough from the pamphlet, but maybe it’s fruitless to debate this point too much.

Yes, of course he’s touchable. Dr. Johnson’s criticisms are reasonable. He’s not proceeding in the totalizing way that Tolstoy is.

 

It's funny. Just last night I read this:
"In the ancient world words have power, and only a culture based in television would think a picture is worth a thousand of them."
—Edward Teach, Watch What you Hear: Penelope's Dream of Twenty Geese

We're using terms like 'carried away' or 'reaction' or something to indicate an invested trance-like state where a lot of meaning is inferred. How engrossing one medium or the other is, I can agree, inherently a matter of taste.

How much meaning one can convey, however, (and despite the quote I posted) I believe is objectively equivalent. It's simply different forms of meaning in and out, a good number of them subconscious. People don't dance a jig while reading sheet music, for example.

For your excerpt there, while yes it probably wouldn't transcribe all that well to play format, the intimacy and editing of a film could easily take its place. It's a scene without much if any complex abstraction. The ideas can easily be supplied visually with some effects and perspective, and are best heavily bolstered with tear-jerking stringed instruments. Arguably it has much more potential in a video format than written.

 

I think it would be ridiculous to make an objective statement of "novels are better than plays". But certainly it isn't ridiculous to debate ideas like "novels are a better medium to explore the interior mind of a person than visual media like plays". To say "novels and plays are similar because they both are narrative mediums, but they are different in the methods by which they tell the story, and thus tell different types of stories or explore similar stories from unique angles" isn't absurd. In fact, I would argue that type of reflection on art is necessary. It is important to put the art that is being created through the proper genre to elicit the intended effect, emotion, or message, and it isn't possible to make that decision without this type of comparison.

 

Or alternately take a novel and strip away everything but the dialogue. Then you've got something more like a script. My point is that a script is not a finished product, it's just instructions on what the players are supposed to say, with no indication of how, or what emotions or feelings to put in. That's all left up to them or the director.

 

Sorry, left-brain person here. I don't deal in conspiracy theories! I go by what I read on the page and what settles reasonably in my mind.

Tolstoy's criteria are neither arbitrary nor without merit. I can imagine how much of himself he poured into his own works, and to see Shakespeare's works lauded as they were, while he saw all their shortcomings, especially the lack of sincerity, went against everything he knew about producing art. I also read Tolstoy's What is Art? - it gives a little more insight.

Yes, lol, they definitely had different personalities. One of my favourite reads ever is Boswell's Life of Johnson