InWhat is Art?, Tolstoy suggests that it is the communicative or transmis-
sive dimension of artistic expression that in the first instance distinguishes it
from mere individual unburdening.“Art,”he tells us,“is one of the means of
intercourse between man and man...The peculiarity of [this] means of
intercourse, distinguishing it from intercourse by means of words, consists
in this, that whereas by means of words a man transmits his thoughts to
another, by means of art he transmits his feelings.”^111
Though successful communication and communion of feeling may mark a
difference from therapeutic expression, it cannot yet be a sufficient condition
for artistic expression. As Tolstoy notices, art is more than a matter of simply a
man causing“another man to yawn when he himself cannot help yawning, or
to laugh or cry when he himself is obliged to laugh or cry, or to suffer when he
himself is suffering–that does not amount to art.”^112 Hence Tolstoy claims
that“by art, in the limited sense of the word, we do not mean all human
activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which we for some reason
select from it and to which we attach special importance,”and he then
specifies that“feelings flowing from...religious perception”^113 are the par-
ticular province of art. It is unclear, however, why it is just these feelings
whose expression should matter in art, other than for the sake of bringing
people together, under the assumption–surely dubitable–that such feelings
are shared. This suggestion also competes, however, with a further specifica-
tion of Tolstoy’s that for artistic expression communication of feeling must
take place“by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed
in words.”^114 Though Tolstoy is on the right track in emphasizing the import-
ance for artistic expression of both communicative success and arrangement
of artistic materials, we still need to know more about exactly how this is done
and why it matters. As Colin Lyas comments,“Tolstoy has not made clear
when a vision is embodied in a work. Moreover, we are given no clear idea why
we feel so moved by sharing the expressed visions of artists.”^115
According to Ralph Waldo Emerson in“Self-Reliance,”“In every work of
genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a
certain alienated majesty.”^116 This thought points toward both a way(^111) Tolstoy,What is Art?,p.49. (^112) Ibid., p. 50. (^113) Ibid., p. 53.
(^114) Ibid., p. 51. (^115) Lyas,Aesthetics, p. 66.
(^116) Ralph Waldo Emerson,“Self-Reliance,”inSelections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed.
Stephen E. Whicher (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), pp. 147–68 at p. 147.
110 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art