Works of art are important to us, because they communicate some-
thing of value to us; what is communicated in a poem by Dante, what
“saved” Primo Levi, was not a recollection of facts about the world that
could be empirically verified, what is communicated by a poem (or any
work of art) has something to do with history in a larger sense, with, as
Levi’s comments indicate, the evocation of a memory of our shared
humanity, an evocation that had a powerful effect on his own self-image.
Richard Rorty, in mounting his case for the value of the arts against
those skeptics who would claim that art disorients us, makes a claim that
helps clarify the humanizing function of art: “[art] serves to develop and
modify a group’s self-image by, for example, apotheosizing its heroes,
diabolizing its enemies, mounting dialogues among its members, and
refocusing its attention.”^14 Following Rorty’s lead, we can add that art
not only has the power to put us in touch with our humanity, but to
define our humanity. Truly great art is constitutive of our humanity—
giving shape to ideas and giving rise to feelings and sensibilities that
might not exist were it not for the artifacts created by the artist.
Masterpieces of art can be said to be part of the patrimony of human-
ity itself. Think of Shakespeare’s tragedies or his sonnets, of Keats’s and
Wordsworth’s poetry, of Mozart’s symphonies. These works have helped
develop the very conception of what it means to be human. Take the con-
cept of human envy and jealousy: without Shakespeare’s Othello,
wouldn’t our view of jealousy be impoverished? Shakespeare’s art is a
model of how art connects us to the world: Iago personifies envy and the
jealousy he elicits from Othello is an important source of our notion of
jealousy as a “green-eyed monster.” Returning to Dante’s poetry, con-
sider what Alexander von Humboldt remarked upon seeing the Southern
Cross in the night sky as he approached the South American continent
for the first time:Impatient to explore the equatorial regions I could not raise my eyes to the
sky without dreaming of the Southern Cross and remembering a passage
from Dante.^15Dante’s work made a mark so strong in the mind of Humboldt, that lines
from his poetry become part of the experience of seeing the night sky
and understanding the meaning of the Southern Cross for the human
observer gazing upon its brilliant light.
The traces left upon the human mind by works of art can transform
reality, offer a new light, and if the work of art is beautiful, then we are
elevated to the realm of perfection. Recall Mill’s claim that “poetry80 Elizabeth Millán