the Gospel says: 'Unus est bonus, Deus,' we may say: 'Unus est artifex, Deus.'

II

Here is a metaphysical light thrown on the movement which attracts-which attracted yesterday-our age to the search for pure music, pure painting, pure drama, and pure poetry (I understand the word in the sense of the persistent effort which has been made among us since Mallarmé). To command our art to be art in a pure state, by effectively freeing itself from all the conditions of existence in the human subject, is to desire to usurp for it the aseity of God. To ask of it to tend to pure art as a curve to its asymptote,' without rejecting the servitudes of its human condition, but gaining on them continually by pulling upon created bonds to the extreme limit of elasticity, is to ask of it to realise more fully its radical spirituality. Pride here, magnanimity there, both aiming at the impossible, either madness or heroism. Blinding moment when the utmost sin and the utmost virtue touch and mingle, each of us in the confusion advancing to his place, the weak man to the presumption in which he is engulfed, the strong man to the virtue in which he grows in stature.

Let us try to be more precise. The whole argument comes to this, that there is an antinomy for art (and it is not alone in this) between the supreme postulations of the essence taken in itself (transcendentally) and the conditions of existence called forth by this same essence as it is realised in this world.2

1 For a truth of this kind is a limit of this world; it is not permitted to establish oneself there. Nothing so pure can coexist with the conditions of life.'-Paul Valéry, Preface to Connaissance de la Déesse, by Lucien Fabre.

2 All things (like intelligence and art) which touch upon the transcendental order and are realised either in a pure state in God,

Whither would the notion of pure art' lead us if pushed to its farthest logical extremity? To an art completely isolated from everything but its own laws of operation and the object to be created as such; in other words, separated, freed and completely detached from man and things: in fact, art, in itself-recta ratio factibiliumis not human like the moral virtues, and does not base itself on things like the speculative virtues. If then it is carried to a pure state, it is entirely concerned in making being and in no way concerned with beings. But thus by being itself, it destroys itself, for it is on man in whom it subsists, and on things by which it is fed, that its existence depends. Angelist suicide, through forgetfulness of

matter.

Remind it that poetry is ontology',' that being of man, it cannot any more than he cut itself off from things; that being in man, art ends always by revealing in some way the weaknesses of man, and that, if it devours the substance of the artist and the passions, options, the speculative and moral virtues which make that substance really human, it or by participation' in created subjects, hold such an antinomy. In the very measure that they tend (with an ineffectual but real tendency) to the plenitude of their essence taken in itself (transcendentally), and in its pure formal line, they tend to pass beyond themselves, to cross the limits of their essence taken in a created subject (with the specific determinations belonging to it), and at the same time to escape from the conditions of existence.

Thus the intelligence in man, in whom it is reason, tends to rejoin the perfection of its essence, taken transcendentally, and by this fact to pass beyond both its limits as reason and its conditions of existence in the subject. Hence, when grace does not come to elevate nature, the angelist swooning into 'pure intellection', which is thus a mystic suicide of thought.

1 6.66

Poetry is theology," says Boccaccio in his commentary on the Divine Comedy. Ontology would be perhaps the proper word, for poetry strives above all towards the roots of the knowledge of Being.'-Charles Maurras, Preface to Musique Intérieure.

devours its own subject of inherence; that being in a certain way for man (not in itself, but with regard to the use that is made of it),1 it wastes away in the end if it refuses to accept either the constraints and limitations exacted from without by the well-being of man, or the service of general culture, which demands that it shall be readable, accessible, free to take up the heritage of reason and wisdom by which we live, to interest the entire human race in its work and its song '2-you remind it of its conditions of existence, which are all: humanity.3 It will be irritated by this (which is largely excused by the tone in which these remonstrances are usually made to it); but it remains true none the less. Indeed, it might happen that a frank acceptance of these servitudes would bring about a renewal of its own life, especially when there is in question a condition implied in its formal object itself, as for example the respect for the destination of

the work.

There remains this, however, that if art grows greater in accepted servitudes, it is by struggling against them; and that all the exigencies which its conditions of existence have shown us, stand, as we say, on the side of 'subjective' and ' material' causality. In itself, let us not forget, art is an inhuman virtue, an effort towards an activity gratuitously creative, concentrated solely on its own mystery and its own operative laws, without subordinating itself either to the interests of man or to the evocation of what already exists; in short the effort towards pure art follows from 1 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Comment. in Politicam Aristotelis. 2 Charles Maurras.

› Henri Ghéon recently emphasised the advantage for artists of a conception of the world which reintegrates them in the social body', 'maintains ordinary intercourse through them, without which neither an art nor a society could breathe or nourish itself'.Preface to Partis-pris.

4 Cf. Pierre Reverdy, Nord-Sud, Nos. 4-5, 8, 13?

the very essence of art, once beauty has awakened it to itself. It cannot renounce the effort without betrayal. A too easy resignation to its conditions of existence is again suicide for art. The sin of materialism.

It will be noted that, from this point of view, a return to religion, to the straight moral life or to sound philosophy, does not in any way in itself imply a simultaneous raising of art; it merely leads it back to normal conditions of existence, and to the normal responsibilities implied by these; this may strengthen its vitality, and free it from all sorts of hindrances and obstacles (removere prohibentia), but it may also make it lose in stature, for it is here merely a question of dispositive causality, and everything depends on the advantage which an artistic virtue sufficiently vigorous can draw from it.

Such then is the profound conflict which art cannot evade. The solution of it is doubtless clear to the philosopher. This ideal independence, with regard to the material obligations placed upon it by its conditions of existence, the desire for which is inscribed in its nature, art must acquire by taking advantage of these very obligations, by mastering them, by showing itself strong enough to assume them without being bowed down by them, not by refusing them, which is a confession of weakness somewhere.

But, in practice, for the artist the solution is less simple. There will in fact be advances and retreats; it will be necessary to aim too high, and, for the very purpose of dominating matter more surely and securing fresh hold on it, he will appear to deny it, concealing fresh strength behind this weakness. Mallarmé never desired to reduce the significance of words to nothing; on the contrary he prepared a new way of attacking it.

In any case, however useful the resistances of the critical reason and human surroundings may be, it is not through them, but by the movement of invention itself,

carried on continuously, that the necessary rectifications are brought about. Art raises itself by going farther, not by halting. The spring of the conditions of existence works spontaneously. Or else it is apparent that a too pure effort deflected itself, and harmed a specific requirement of human art; in the changing and never fixed life that the poets carry on throughout time, Mallarmé, and, in another order, Rimbaud, become one fine day the past,' and at that moment make visible in themselves that which is a stopping place, an end, not a beginning, an energy which is exhausted, and towards which it will be necessary to define our position. Then we start again pressing nearer to truth.

Let us add, to end this digression, that quite naturally those who advance in the way of tradition, in via discipline, by preference give their adherence to that, in art, which belongs to its conditions of existence; those who advance in the way of invention, in via inventionis, to that which belongs to its pure form or essence. Thus, this distinction between essence and conditions of existence would perhaps have more chance, if it were recognised as helping towards a fair judgment of:

Cette longue querelle de la tradition et de l'invention
De l'Ordre de l'Aventure,

of which Apollinaire spoke.

III

The problem of imitation, and imitation, properly understood, forms part of the formal side of our art, closely concerns the questions I have just raised. Here the theological consideration of the working Idea shows clearly how alien to art is the servile imitation of natural phenomena, since

1 Those who to-day draw their inspiration from Rimbaud, do not so much continue his poetry in the line of art as transpose him in the line of moral life and action.