THE ROMANTIC FALLACY
By JOHN MIDDLETON MURRY
THE recent re-publication of Tolstoy’s What is Art? has been the occasion of a more serious critical discussion of that remarkable book than it has received before.¹ Yet it has not been apparent that the more serious discussion has brought us any nearer to settling the fundamental question which it raises; the impression is rather that now, for the first time, it has been realised that the question is fundamental. Previously the correct attitude was to laugh at Tolstoy for a barbarian; now there seems to be an uneasy feeling that something more cogent is necessary. The old-fashioned appeal, still made in circles where nothing is learned and nothing forgotten, to that mysterious aesthetic sense which is the privilege of one in a hundred thousand, begins to tinkle a little forlornly, like the bells on a demoded buffoon, who made his reputation by replying to this question of ‘What is art? ’—Fe ne sais quoi, mais je sais ce que tu ne sais point qu’est-ce que c'est ce je ne sais quoi. It was a good joke, in the good old days. As well try to derail an express-train by putting a half-penny on the line, as counter Tolstoy’s attack with such forlorn impertinences. That Tolstoy’s attack is we all feel. But, how to counter it is another matter. To declare that art is a je ne sais quoi 1s a dangerous weapon against a giant who can reinforce his mais, je sais, moi by dropping Anna Karenina and War and Peace upon our diminished heads. We need less flimsy defences.
¹ Tolstoy on Art. Aylmer Maude. Oxford University Press, 17s. 6d. net. 521
